[OSM-talk] License plan

[Tobias Knerr]

Simon Ward wrote:
> I have had to explain to free software advocates before (I am one) that
> OpenStreetMap is about free geodata, not necessarily free software.

The problem is that while the distinction between software and geodata
has been around from the start, the one involving images is to be
introduced only now.

Imagine this in the software example: If we had been requiring that all
software using OSM data had to be GPL until now and decided to drop this
requirement, telling people that they simply misunderstood the project's
goals and that it never was about free software -- I'd imagine that
there would be some mappers who firmly opposed that move.

> It turns out that much of
> the software for OpenStreetMap is free software.

Which isn't surprising because few people outside the OSM and free
software/content communities are using OSM-based software so far. This
doesn't make it reasonably attractive for authors of proprietary
software. I expect that to change once we are competitive in terms of
data quality and coverage. Same for not-so-free produced works.

>> I don't think explaining that data is more useful for us than images
>> will help (I've already tried that), because that won't stop them from
>> demanding both.
> 
> Similarly, we can put enough free images out there for them to be useful
> to all, and make the non‐free ones hardly worth the pixels/vectors.

Well, this doesn't really help to explain why we should allow those
non-free ones to be created in the first place.

Tobias Knerr