[OSM-talk] License plan

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Ben Laenen wrote:
> I care about whether the database will still 
> be "clean" after a possible change (meaning, properly licensed).

The current license is anything but "properly licensed".

If you take a *strict* view then we're all violating CC-BY-SA every day 
by not listing every individual contributor, and we're also violating 
the database rights of the operator of the database because nowhere does 
CC-BY-SA grant you the permission required by European law to use 
someone else's database.

If you take a *relaxed* view then all our data is un-protected anyway 
because facts are not copyrightable.

> If that can't be worked out there will certainly be no-one making use of 
> OSM since it'd be a legal mess.

I hope that I have shown that we're in a legal mess already, and 
basically have been there from day one. This still doesn't mean we have 
to change the license; we could simply choose to keep the mess we have. 
But saying that our data was "properly licensed" at the moment is really 
very misleading.

Bye
Frederik