[OSM-talk] [OSM-legal-talk] The OSM licence: where we are, where we're and are, where we're going

Richard Fairhurst richard at systemeD.net
Wed Jan 9 17:00:27 GMT 2008


(follow-ups to legal-talk, please)

Peter Miller wrote:

> There are clearly uncertainties and complications with the current licence,
> however it does allow for the license to be upgraded without going back to
> original contributors for permission.

In OSM's case that's unlikely to be true.

Copyright in OSM contributions is owned by the original contributors,  
not by OSMF. As the CC-BY-SA 2.0 summary says, "A new version of this  
license is available. You should use it for new works, and you may  
want to relicense existing works under it. No works are automatically  
put under the new license, however."

Since no works are automatically put under the new licence, every  
contributor would have to choose to move to (say) CC-Data-BY-SA just  
as they would any other licence.


> As such I feel confident that CC could
> come up with a derivative of CC-BY-SA 3.0 that covers our needs and plug the
> gaps (and those of other gedata/DB type datasets generally); after all, if
> the ODL can do it then why can't CC do it

The following background is absolutely crucial. It's in the  
OpenGeoData post but I'll take the chance to restate it. I'd encourage  
you, Longbow4u and others to reflect on it.

* The Open Data Commons Database Licence is a share-alike licence with  
attribution elements. It is, as you say, "in the spirit of CC-BY-SA".

* Its authors are working with Creative Commons.

* Creative Commons has a strong policy that "facts are free"[1]. They  
have therefore now introduced a "licence" for factual information, but  
this is essentially public domain (CC0/PDDL) with a voluntary request  
to share info. We are _not_ recommending that OSM adopts that licence.  
The ODC Database Licence is entirely separate.


So to specifically answer your point about "if the ODL can do it then  
why can't CC do it":

* CC doesn't believe factual information should be subject to  
restrictions, so _won't_ do it.

* But if CC were to do it (if, for example, they were lobbied to do  
so), their existing collaboration with ODC makes it very likely that  
they would actually adopt the Open Data Commons Database Licence.

In other words, this option is significantly _more_ copyleft than CC  
themselves propose.


> Btw, where should this debate be happening? Personally I suggest the legal
> nerdy details are discussed on legal-talk but any discussion about
> principles are discussed on 'talk'

It's a good point, but in practice legal-talk will work best because  
it's very difficult to separate the two, and because discussions will  
drift from one to the other. We also don't want to overwhelm the rest  
of the project with it!

cheers
Richard


[1] From their database FAQ: "As you know, Creative Commons and  
Science Commons work to promote freely available content and  
information. Our preference is that people do not overstate their  
copyright or other legal rights. Consequently, we adopt the position  
that 'facts are free' and people should be educated so that they are  
aware of this."





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