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

[Lester Caine]

SteveC wrote:
> Oh we have those people though, matt is calm, rational and diligently  
> replying to the concerns. Note its mostly misunderstood or ignored by  
> people like 80n. That frees me to lose my temper with the passive  
> aggressive lot who just want to screw everything up and can't work as  
> a team.

Just to stick my oar in ....
I think part of the problem here is that the 'license' problem DOES go back 
several years, and I have many emails about it. BECAUSE it had moved from the 
'front line' while all the facts were gathered, newcomers would not have been 
aware of the REAL problem, which is that courts were separating 'data' from 
'documents' and allowing commercial organizations free use of the underlying 
data simply because it was not a breach of copyright. There are a couple of 
commercial organization in the US using freely gathered data for their own 
purposes without putting anything back into the project that generated it - the 
courts have found they are not in breach of copyright!

The bottom line is that courts all over the world will make up their own mind on 
how THEY think licenses are interpreted and because there is not a single 
'jurisdiction' ANYTHING we draft will be ignored somewhere in the world!

I probably do not support the current offering, but that is more because I see 
it as restrictive and I would prefer free access. HOWEVER it HAS to be 
restrictive otherwise any commercial organization can walk over it. If we could 
get a world wide agreement then there would not be a problem, but TODAY I see 
many government sources fully supporting the SPIRIT if OSM and providing data to 
be included. We DO need to protect the use of that data - something which 
'copyright' simply does not do - and is an area where there is NO case law to 
fall back on? SO we need something which can then become acceptable case law?

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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