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

[Matt Amos]

On Sun, Dec 6, 2009 at 8:36 PM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
<avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

it would be interesting, and OSMF have contacted other lawyers for
their opinion on other matters, but we only had one response. this
doesn't fill me with confidence that if we asked for legal advice we
would have many responses. on the other hand, OSMF counsel is a good
lawyer, and i would expect him to know what he's talking about.

if you know any lawyers who would be willing to give legal advice
pro-bono, LWG would be very happy to hear about it.

> 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?

yes. the plan (subject to change based on technical feasibility, of
course) is here:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Backup_Plan#Marking_elements_.22OK.22

the key is that there must be an uninterrupted chain of ODbL-licensed
elements from the first version of the element, followed by a
referential integrity cleanup. at this point it's not clear that the
relicensing will go ahead, but if it does you'll see more discussion
of this on dev at .

cheers,

matt