[OSM-talk] License plan

Stanislav Brabec utx at penguin.cz
Tue Mar 3 21:35:58 GMT 2009


Richard Fairhurst wrote in Tue 03/03 2009 at 06:55 -0800:
> Pieren wrote:
> > It's very confusing now about who, how and what is deleted with 
> > the license change. I would appreciate if someone could answer 
> > the following questions:
> 
> It's not been decided. What do you think should happen?
> 
> Everything is up for debate. ODbL itself is up for debate. As Jordan
> (co-author) said on odc-discuss earlier re: a point we raised: "It (like the
> rest of the ODbL) isn't set in stone and so totally open for discussion."

Learning from history of open projects, nearly all of them forked before
the license change. You should expect, that OSM will do it as well.

But I can imagine two completely different scenarios with two totally
different reasons to fork. Only one of them would be destructive to the
community.


Scenario 1 (as is, destructive):

+ 2 months
      * Final cut-off. Delete data from people who have said no to ODbL
        or not responded or revert. Delete data with source tag related
        to organizations, that did not response or did not accept the
        new license.

Forks:
     1. OSM: ODbL, 0-30% loss, depending on country
     2. CC-BY-SA-OSM: CC-BY-SA fork, full database, community fork


Scenario 2 (modified license, more work, non-destructive):

Make OSM ODbL upwards compatible to CC-BY-SA. Ensure that OSM ODbL
license allows to incorporate CC-BY-SA licensed data as they are.

+ 1 week
OSM database has a new tag: osm_license. All existing submissions are
marked as osm_license=CC-BY-SA. This tag is immutable by editors.

Another database is populated by set of rules:
      * User John allows to re-license everything to ODbL
      * User Adam allows rejects the re-license
      * User Jan did not respond
      * Provider of data with source="map_company_donate" allows to
        re-license everything to ODbL
      * Provider of data with source="big_map_company" refused the
        re-license
      * Provider of data with source="small_company" did not respond

+ 2 weeks
Once a week run a privileged license_migration_script, that has the
privilege to change the license tag if:
      * Only allows_relicense users are mentioned in the history
      * Only allows_relicense companies are mentioned in the source tag
      * The above applies for all points, lines and relations of the
        element

+ 2 months 
      * 80-100% of the data was migrated to ODbL. It's no more legally
        possible to use these data for closed source routing. There are
        still potentially some parts of the database with the old
        license, maybe they will stay forever.

Forks:
     1. OSM: ODbL+CC-BY-SA-OSM (dual license for old data), full
        database
     2. CC-BY-SA-OSM: full database, commercial fork created by closed
        source providers, full database

+ ~188 years
      * Legislation will probably allow to convert all submissions done
        by individuals to ODbL.


________________________________________________________________________
Stanislav Brabec
http://www.penguin.cz/~utx





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