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

[Thomas Wood]

On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 7:04 PM, Nathan Vander Wilt
<nate-lists at calftrail.com> wrote:
> 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
>
>
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>

Please continue this sort of discussion on legal-talk@
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-talk

-- 
Regards,
Thomas Wood
(Edgemaster)