[OSM-talk] License plan

[Tobias Knerr]

Frederik Ramm wrote:
> I have never mapped anything thinking 
> "hey, maybe someone else is going to make a nice map from this that I 
> can then use". Not one single time. I don't know if that makes me an 
> exception. Most people I talked to were enthusiastic about the data 
> being collected, and were talking about cool things *they* could do with 
> the data, but I might be moving in the wrong circles ;-)

My (completely unscientific) observation is that liberal opinions about
licensing (esp. PD-advocacy) are more common with people who actually
write software / make map styles / do other "advanced" things with OSM
data. Support for liberal licensing also appears to be more prevalent on
the mailing lists than anywhere else in the project.

One possible explanation might be that these "liberals" have experienced
the problems of incompatible licenses etc. themselves. However, I'm
starting to think that there's something else: If people are able to
create cool OSM stuff themselves, they care most about licensing not
getting in their way. Mappers who don't have the technical or artistic
skills or simply the time to do so will still want cool stuff to be done
with OSM. Of course, they have to rely on others creating it, and, more
importantly, others allowing them to use it under attractive conditions.
A license that guarantees the last part might seem rather appealing for
many of them.

Just a side note because I found this aspect of the statement especially
interesting. Most probably overly generalizing, misleading and/or simply
wrong. ;-)

Tobias Knerr