[OSM-talk] [Announce] OSMF license change vote has started

Matt Amos zerebubuth at gmail.com
Sun Dec 6 03:36:14 GMT 2009


On Sun, Dec 6, 2009 at 1:59 AM, Anthony <osm at inbox.org> wrote:
> I'm not sure if it's enforceable or not.  And I've asked on the legal list
> (so far without an answer) whether or not agreeing to the Contributor Terms
> requires also agreeing to the ODbL in ways that purport to reach beyond
> copyright law (which, here in Florida, is not very far).

it's my understanding that agreeing to the contributor terms doesn't
require agreeing to anything that "purports" to reach beyond copyright
law. the license was written by a lawyer well-versed in US IP law and
reviewed by another working (pro bono) on behalf of the OSMF who is
also well-versed in US IP law.

there are contractual components to the ODbL, but these are necessary
as several lawyers have expressed doubt that copyright law alone can
protect OSM data, especially in the US. for more information, please
read the proposal document:

http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/File:License_Proposal.pdf

> I'd be willing to release my contributions into the public domain.  But I
> won't agree to further restrictions on the OSM database which go beyond
> copyright law.  Someone else pointed out that that's what Google does.
> Yeah, I thought OSM was supposed to be better than that.

well, that's unfortunate. it would really help if we could understand
why you don't feel you could agree to the contractual parts of the
ODbL. they are there for a good reason and weren't included
frivolously.

> In any case, I see little chance of the switch being made under the terms
> outlined.  Between people who refuse the Contributor Terms and people who
> just never respond, there's likely going to be *way* too much to delete.

we would obviously like to minimise the number of people who don't
want to agree. we would like to be as inclusive as possible, but as
several people have said already, we've been through a number of
consultation periods, so we thought we'd ironed out most of the major
objections.

please remember, we've been working for a while to find a license for
OSM which works, and protects the data we've all worked on. ODbL does
this much better than CC BY-SA, which likely doesn't work at all in
some jurisdictions. ODbL has very much the same license elements as CC
BY-SA - it's an attribution and share-alike license. there are some
differences, mostly in the underlying law used to enforce it and the
way it concentrates on share-alike for the data, not the produced
works.

cheers,

matt




More information about the talk mailing list