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

[Frederik Ramm]

Anthony,

Anthony wrote:
> I looked at the license and I said "Why are they bothering with this 
> crap?  It's not like this stuff is copyrightable in the first place.  
> Well, I guess that this stuff is protected by some laws in some 
> jurisdictions, so CC-BY-SA is useful for waiving those rights in those 
> jurisdictions.  For me, in a state with sane laws, I don't have to worry 
> about it.  What the heck, sure, I'll license my data under CC-BY-SA.  
> Can't hurt."

Ah, now I get it. You are a PD advocate by heart like myself, and you 
were actually *happy* with the non-working CC-BY-SA. Or put it this way, 
for you the major point of CC-BY-SA was the "you are granted the 
following rights..." bit (which wasn't required for your jurisdiction 
but might have been in others), and you sort of ignored the "under the 
following conditions..." bit.

It's nice to see that point of view, given that some people endlessly 
drone on about how there was a "consensus" in OSM to have a share-alike 
license; now there's you having "consented" to CC-BY-SA but only because 
you knew it wasn't binding for you anyway. Sweet!

I am also pro-PD but I am based in Europe where it is less clear which 
aspects of CC-BY-SA work and which don't; for me, ODbL at least brings 
more safety and clarity about what is allowed and what isn't, so I will 
support it. If I were in the States where it seems blatantly obvious 
that CC-BY-SA doesn't protect our data, and thus ODbL only adds 
restrictions, I might think differently.

However, one thing you should perhaps consider is this argument of 
"project sanity": We're all in this together. It's no good having a 
license that has different effects in different countries. This has the 
potential to disrupt community efforts - a US-based project using OSM 
data but people from Europe cannot participate for fear of prosecution 
in their countries. Or, you are a US company and create an OSM based 
product but cannot sell to Europe because your customers fear legal 
trouble. ODbL doesn't completely harmonise jurisdictions but it goes a 
long way there, and I find this desirable.

Another thing is of course the "moral" component. The non-working 
CC-BY-SA in your country might let you get away with taking OSM data, 
printing a map from it and claiming full copyright on that. But even if 
legally non-working, the community still expects you to adhere to the 
share-alike terms of the license, and will scorn you for that activity. 
Whereas with ODbL, this is perfectly allowed, and will be accepted by 
the community.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"