[OSM-talk] Are closed issues really closed & post ODbL data removal plan

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason avarab at gmail.com
Sun Dec 6 20:36:45 GMT 2009


Apologies in advance if this is fanning the flames on the currently
ongoing license flamewar but I have a (hopefully) innocent query on
the matter.

Last year I asked what was the plan exactly for removing any CC-BY-SA
content left in the database after the now-scheduled changeover:

 http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/legal-talk/2008-December/001778.html

There's one closed issue that indirectly deals with this:

 http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Closed_Issues#Features_touched_by_multiple_contributors.2C_not_all_of_whom_sign_up_to_new_terms

But the implementation plan doesn't seem to mention anything specific
about how the data will be removed:

  http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Implementation_Plan#Week_13

So my question is:

 1. The closed issue I referred to contains the text "OSMF counsel
does not believe" on something that seems to have fundamental
significance to how the transition will be performed. Specifically the
question of (addressed in my December 2008 mail) how we determine
whether ODbL licensed works are derived from things still under the
CC-BY-SA in February.

The OSMF counsel seems to suggest that we only have to worry about
this on a per-object basis, i.e. if there are some CC-BY-SA-only edits
in the history of a given node/way/relation but I'd have thought we'd
also have to worry about the case where someone has traced hundreds of
amenity=* nodes from the layout of what's now a CC-BY-SA-only road
network. But OSMF counsel thinks it's "not necessary to remove nearby
or adjoining elements".

I know the OSMF contacted outside legal counsel to comment on the ODbL
itself but has it solicited a second pair of eyes on these open/closed
issues? It would be interesting to know whether other lawyers take
such a narrow view of what constitutes a derived work.

2. Is anyone working on the technical side of the CC-BY-SA-only data
removal, e.g. filtering the planet to throw out objects which have
CC-BY-SA-only data in their history? I haven't seen anything on dev@
about this or on the wiki. What's the plan?




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