[Openstreetmap] The license of choice for OpenStreetmap.org? ( Was: European Roads?)

[Matt Amos]

On Sunday 24 April 2005 12:42, Frank Mohr wrote:
> Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> > [Frank Mohr]
> >>I think "CC-BY-SA" and DFSG are compatible.
> >
> > Some people don't agree with you. :/
> >
> > I'm not up to date on the current status, but know the CC people
> > are in touch with some Debian people to try to resolve the issue.
> >
> > Legalese isn't my area of interest, but I did a quick Google
> > search to see if I could find some info, and came up with
> > <URL:http://people.debian.org/~evan/ccsummary.html>.

small point here:
"A more specific example for Debian would be a programmer who creates 
documentation licensed under Attribution 2.0. He could require that 
references in derived versions to design or implementation decisions 
he made for the program be removed."

i don't read it in this way, i think that the requirement is to remove 
reference to the author in specific, i.e: email address or name, 
rather than to remove reference to the "original author" as an 
abstract person.

i think this is simply to protect people who wouldn't want to be 
associated with a derived work that was, e.g: inaccurate or 
offensive.

the anti-drm clause is quite scary in its scope, given that printing 
and annotating by hand might be construed as "controlling access to 
or use of the Work in a manner inconsistent with the terms [of the CC 
license]"...

> at least the first CC-related restriction that's criticised makes
> sense for map data
>
> # The above clause allows a licensor to prohibit modified versions
> that # mention them or reference them.
>
> lets assume someone takes the data set, builds in some faults and
> redistributes them with reference to the original author.

exactly. there was a piece of art which was a map of Britain with the 
north and south reversed, i.e: the label on London said "Edinburgh" 
and vice-versa. there was another where some artist took the london 
tube map and changed the names on the stations.

while this is great as Art, its no longer useful as a map and i'd 
suggest that we want to retain attribution, but disclaim that the 
work is "OpenStreetMap" any longer.

> > So, I guess a question to answer is; do we want Debian to be able
> > to include the maps produced by this project in their archive?  I
> > do. What about the rest of you?  If the answer is yes, we should
> > select a license that is compatible with DFSG.
>
> for me the answer is yes ..

given that the OSM data set, in its global entirety, might one day 
reach several terabytes i think its unlikely that debian will want to 
distribute it.

i'm sure they'd be happy to distribute the programs which access the 
OSM servers, which will probably be (L)GPL anyway.

> there are seeral solutions:
> - dual license GPL or CC

the GPL really doesnt apply to data in a meaningful way. the GFDL 
would be better (assuming we classify the map as a documentation of 
the Real World), but iirc, has issues of its own.

> - CC-licensed data sets in the "non-free" tree
>    while the related software is in main or contrib
>
>    example for this: amoeba (contrib) <-> amoeba-data (non-free)
>
> - provide just a download package, that fetches the data from
> somewhere else. This package might also keep a local data copy
> uptodate.

i think this is the most practical, as TIGER/line is many gigabytes 
and thats just for the USA... if we include satellite imagery, 
(landsat and other stuff we may buy) GPS data and meta-data we could 
easily exceed that very quickly.

>    example: msttcorefonts (contrib)
>
>
> Frank

cya,

matt
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