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

[Nathan Vander Wilt]

On May 6, 2008, at 9:44 AM, Nathan Vander Wilt wrote:
> [blah, blah, blah]

I hope that I did make my concerns clear without offending anyone too  
greatly. Regardless, it would probably be more helpful to say what I  
hope could be done to address my concerns, instead of just more-or- 
less complaining.


I really would like to see a license as simple as the following:

For data users -
0. Open Street Map collects and creates public domain map data.
1. Attribution of Open Street Map is expected. We make it easy.
2. Contributing back or freely sharing modifications is strongly  
encouraged.

For map editors -
1. Only add essentially uncopyrighted map data.
2. You are welcome join the list of contributors.



This is pretty much how the Public Domain Data Licence with Community  
Norms works, right? (See http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Open_Data_License#Criticism 
  ) Set up community norms to say "BY-SA" and it seems like a perfect  
fit for the data and (hopefully) most contributors' wishes.

I see a lot of benefits to this, certainly over the current license,  
but even over the proposed set of new licenses:
- Easy for contributors large and small to understand.
- Much easier to check existing datasets for compatibility.
- Doesn't change much for data users in the open source community.
- Enables commercial use by small companies who want to do the right  
thing, but can't just ignore grey areas that leave them or their  
customers liable.
- It wouldn't change much as far as abuse by large corporations, as  
I'm sure their lawyers are earning more than our lawyers anyway. It  
actually seems like a clearer license with more indemnity could  
encourage a bigger company that is still somewhat concerned with it's  
PR credibility to use the data as intended. Wouldn't the resulting  
publicity do much more for OSM than a viral license?

Right now the current and proposed licenses only seems to hurt small  
businesses, who can afford neither proprietary data nor the  
liabilities of the remaining grey areas. (I hope that precluding any  
sort of commercial use of the data is not the intent of most  
contributors.) If the data is in the public domain, sure some bad guys  
might abuse it, but please don't disregard the benefit that companies  
willing to follow the spirit of the community norms could bring to the  
project.

thanks,
-natevw