[OSM-talk] OSMF: The people you are going to hand over your OSM data ...

[Matt Amos]

On Sun, Dec 6, 2009 at 3:25 AM, 80n <80n80n at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 11:41 PM, SteveC <steve at asklater.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Dec 5, 2009, at 4:25 PM, Ulf Lamping wrote:
>> > Remember: Steve is the head of the OSMF, so this is the OSMF Chairman's
>> > position about other peoples opinions when they don't share his own
>> > opinion.
>>
>> I'm not allowed to have opinions?
>>
>> > Is this the organization you want to hand over the license of your OSM
>> > data?
>>
>> The OSMF wont own the data and you know it.
>>
> The Contributor Terms contains the following clause:  "You hereby grant to
> OSMF and any party that receives Your Contents a worldwide, royalty-free,
> non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable license to do any act that is
> restricted by copyright over anything within the Contents, whether in the
> original medium or any other."
>
> That's pretty much as close as you can get to owning a piece of data.

out of interest, would you prefer that it were worded like CC BY-SA?

"[you] hereby grant[s] [OSMF] a worldwide, royalty-free,
non-exclusive, perpetual (for the duration of the applicable
copyright) license to exercise the rights in the Work as stated below:
[list of rights covered by the Berne convention.] The above rights may
be exercised in all media and formats whether now known or hereafter
devised. The above rights include the right to make such modifications
as are technically necessary to exercise the rights in other media and
formats."

as far as i can see the contributor terms definition says the same
thing, except it's more concise. we strived for readability and
brevity in the contributor terms, given that it will be read by so
many people. do you think it would have been better to go for the
longer version as CC BY-SA does?

just as CC BY-SA contains limitations on the exercise of those rights
(BY and SA), so does the contributor terms - initially only a release
under CC BY-SA and ODbL, subject to a vote of the OSMF membership and
"active contributors" if the need arises to change that to a different
"free and open" license.

cheers,

matt