[OSM-talk] open data

[rob at robmyers.org]

Hi.

My name's Rob Myers. I'm involved with various Free Culture projects including
Free Culture UK, I'm a Creative Commons mailing list regular, and I helped map
Reading a little the other weekend.

Tom Carden Wrote:

> Relicensing is definitely an option, but it must be to a license that
> is appropriate for geodata.  As Richard has pointed out, there isn't
> one yet... however I agree with Tom Chance that the fight shouldn't be
> to loosen restrictions on OSM so that we can republish with
> proprietary data, the fight should be to ask why the data is
> proprietary in the first place...

This is absolutely right IMO. And the existing BY-SA licence doesn't prevent any
of the uses people have in mind. You can still print beautiful maps based on the
data or mash it up with flickr images. What BY-SA does is stop people from
making those uses exclusive. But if you are selling high-quality maps, a grubby
photocopy of your work is no competition whether it has a BY-SA logo on it or
not.

The attribution-only/BY licence won't work for "naming and shaming". Microsoft
happily igored complaints over their use of BSD code (which uses an equivalent
licence) in Windows, and didn't pay any money to the BSD project. The WINE
project moved from a BSD licence to a copyleft licence after one commercial
free-rider used their code without returning anything. Any company that is
"named and shamed" will either ignore it or will ask why OSM didn't use the
NonCommercial CC licence then call their lawyers to discuss how to prevent OSM
causing them any more negative publicity.

> We need a way to license a database of points (other features are more
> complicated) such that a map with those points on can be distributed
> freely, but such that reconstructing the database from the map is not
> acceptable.

I do not understand why this is needed. If the database is freely usable people
can simply get it and do not need to regenerate it. If it is not freely usable
then people are unlikely to contribute to it and this protection will prevent
value being gained as well as lost.

> If someone was to draft such a license, I think it would
> be a really useful tool for OSM consumers to use to approach people
> with nice data sets (like recycling points).

Tailoring licences to a particular kind of work is a concept that comes up
regularly on the CC mailing lists. Certainly each kind of work has its
differences. But locking a particular kind of work to a particular licence
ghettoises it. An OSM licence that covered only geodata would prevent mash-ups
and other creative uses of OSM data, and like an attribution-only licence would
prevent those uses giving anything back to OSM.

Creative uses of OSM data that return value (data, maps, code, whatever) to OSM
as a virtue of the licence are much better than naming-and-shaming, or
restrictive licenses that will discourage that value from being created, or
permissive licences that will allow free riders.

As an artist I can contribute data to OSM, draw maps myself or watch as others
use my data to do so, then use them in my art under BY-SA if I wish to. Some of
the symbols I create may be useful, or the images I create may just be a good
advertisement for OSM. A geodata-only licence will prevent me making art. A
licence that restricts my uses of derivatives (such as preventing me
re-extracting points) will limit the art I can make. And an attribution-only
licence will lead to the value of anything I make that might be of value to OSM
or its constituancy probably escaping.

> Thoughts?

OSM need solid legal advice from a Real Lawyer(tm) on the copyrightability of
GSM log data and maps made from that data. That advice will determine whether
and how OSM's work can be licenced.

If that work can be copyrighted, OSM should very seriously consider FSF-style
copyright assignment of work to the OSM Foundation. With paperwork.

And any licence should be chosen to allow OSM data to be both useful to and
contributable to by society as a whole. It should support creative use, uses
and contributions that no-one has thought of yet. It should protect the ongoing
ability of individuals to use the data, rather than acting as a gift for
commerical interests or denying them access. BY-SA is ideal for this. If people
are worried about using the data as part of a software package dual licencing
with GPL-3 might be a good solution.

- Rob.