[OSM-talk] License plan

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Ben Laenen wrote:
> Ugh, and here I thought people in the FOSS world actually cared about 
> proper use of licenses.

Well if it were my call...

> Here's one: why not proposing to put it all under a proprietary license, 
> and also relicense the works of those that you can't get an answer 
> from.

I know this was meant as a crass example but it is not at all, it is 
almost exactly the situation we are in at the moment.

Currently, we assume that every contributor is the licensor of his data. 
If, today, I take the data authored by mapper "X" and use it in my 
proprietary product without attribution, then nobody but mapper X can 
actually start legal proceedings against me; it is a thing between him 
and me. If you witness me abusing his data, then the only thing you can 
do is try to reach him and ask him to sue me. If he is completely 
unreachable, or unwilling to sue me, then I can continue to use his data 
any way I please.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"