[OSM-talk] Users whose contributions are in the public domain

[Sebastian Spaeth]

Vincent MEURISSE wrote:
> I don't understand why some users want their work in PD.
> The goal of osm is to have a map of the world freely available for
> anyone. But with PD someone (eg google) can take all the work of osm,
> correct and complete it, and copyright it in a way that osm cannot
> reuse the modification. So the copyrighted map will be better than the
> free one.

I know this debate. It is carried out by BSD'lers versus GPL'ers 
constantly and depending on what your respective definition of freedom 
is, each side can be right. There is just no universal answer what 
constitutes "free use".
As a PD'ler I can tell you that I just want to avoid that we have to 
display a 1000 names of contributors in a corner of our map, that I 
would like to be able to overlay data on an OSM map without having to 
worry whether I am allowed to do that, etc.

> The license cc by-sa is a good protection against that as it will
> always allow osm to use derivate work of the original map.

If you have ever looked at our legal list, you will have noticed that it 
is basically impossible to follow that license, that we don't even get 
it right ourselves. Nobody can tell you what will constitute a 
derivative work and what not. If you ask for permissive uses and the 
only answer  you will get from the organization that produces the data 
"ask a lawyer, we can't/won't tell you", then that license is clearly 
not right.

spaetz