[OSM-talk] Why the BSD vs GPL debate is irrelevant to OSM

[Brendan Morley]

On Sat, 12 Dec 2009 18:48:17 +0100, andrzej zaborowski wrote:

>2009/12/11 Shalabh <shalabh.w at gmail.com>:
>> Ok, heres a question I have been meaning to ask for long. What is the big
>> deal if the big, bad G takes a chunk of data from OSM and uses it? Do I
>> care? No. If anything, I would be happy that we created something worthy to
>> be used by a corporation. As long as they dont restrict me from using data
>> on OSM, which they in no way cant, I dont have a problem. If they dont 'give
>> back' to the community, big deal!!

>It is a big deal to me, it's some kind of dream of a better world
>where practically all geospatial data (also software if you're a FOSS
>programmer) has to be free if you want to tap into the huge knowledge
>base all humanity has built till now.  You can already see big closed
>software companies stay behind because they can't use my favourite
>GPL-licensed library, they have to reimplement everything from scratch
>while everyone else uses the free version and adds their own creations
>to this ever-growing base.  It's a virus.

But it would appear that what is bad for "closed software companies" is also bad for government.

(At least where there is a culture of corporations, I guess) government cannot be seen to be discriminatory to "closed software companies" 
or closed companies of any description really.  Is government the good guys or the bad guys for you?

>Google has a lot of data and are good at getting more, be it official
>or crowdsourced.  It would be a huge loss for the collective knowledge
>of everyone if this data escapes the virus.  I can't afford that loss,
>maybe you can.

What is being lost though?


Brendan


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