[OSM-talk] License plan

[Nop]

Hi!

OJ W schrieb:
> If anyone who converts map data into a map image is provided with
> WTFYW license and gets to choose who is permitted to use, view,
> modify, overlay, and copy their images then lots of websites might
> decide "I paid for hosting and rendering, so only people who agree to
> these conditions can use my maps", leading to a fragmentation of
> licenses for the various slippy maps available.
> 
> Do we want to see the slippy-map tileservers becoming a commercial
> battleground for who can make the most money while imposing the most
> restrictions, where currently it's a nice easy "everything is
> CC-BY-SA" level playing-field where tangogps doesn't have to worry
> about enforcing the terms and conditions of 20 different rendererers?

Actually, the opposite is the case.

Right now, the restrictive SA-licence keeps the community people from 
creating better maps using both OSM data and other sources with other 
licences. At the same time, the data ist not sufficiently protected and 
any unscrupulous company or person can just grab everything and create a 
much better map combining any sources, completely disregarding the 
spirit of the licence. The community could not compete with such 
multi-sourced maps and puplic usage would likely prefer the stolen, but 
much more complete maps.

The new license will *enable* the community to create better works based 
on OSM and as long as these are available for free, the evil commercial 
cartographer has no leverage to sell his commercial products if he 
doesn't add considerable effort and due to the DB-license everything he 
adds is available to the community to build upon it, too.


bye
	Nop