[OSM-talk] License plan - what data would need deleting

[Richard Fairhurst]

Dave Stubbs wrote:
> But don't kid yourselves it's a simple A or B choice.

Absolutely.

Steve actually answers this in his (very good IMO) "Licence to kill" post.
You can theoretically work out a complicated Boolean system of "is this
derived from an ODbL refusenik's work?". You can read every bit of
discussion about what "substantial" might mean in different jurisdictions,
and write some clever fuzzy-matching software to reflect that. I think
that's what people are talking about here.

But as Steve points out, that's a programmer's answer, all very
black-and-white. It doesn't actually work like that.

What really makes the difference, in my very limited understanding (but hey,
I'm a journalist not a programmer, limited understanding is a speciality :)
), is intent. Intent, and acting in good faith at all times. If we can
demonstrate that we've taken reasonable precautions; that we have removed
people's data on request (which, of course, we can do at any time); 


And for those who say "well, let's stick with the clean dataset we have
now":

We don't actually have a clean dataset. Nowhere near. We have material from
Google Maps in there. We have material from the Ordnance Survey. We may even
have entire countries which have been taken from a source not compatible
with our current licence - see the discussion about some of the ex-USSR
states.

The reason we haven't been sued is exactly the same. Intent and good faith.
Things like community pressure, the stuff in the FAQ, and the warning you
get when you start Potlatch. The efforts we go to to gather our own data.
That is real, hard proof. And that won't change - we should make real
efforts, and we will, but clinical boolean precision is a distraction.

(Ed asked how we'd "convince a court of law" - that's how. At the very
least, if Paul The Disaffected Mapper doesn't want to go to ODbL, some of
his stuff somehow remains in, and he says "ha, I'm going to sue", that
_very_ instant a crowd of OSMers would go and survey the place in question
to replace his data. You know what we're like. We like a challenge. :) )

cheers
Richard
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