[OSM-talk] License plan

[Jukka Rahkonen]

MP <singularita <at> gmail.com> writes:

 
> I thought of one improvement - in addition to allowing people to
> consent to new license, allow them also to (completely voluntary)
> agree to Public domain their contributions. Some of the people on
> wikipedia (though not nearly a majority) does that for their
> contributions and many photos on wikimedia commons are under PD, so I
> assume some contributors may like it here too - then give them the
> possibility. Some tools to extract only PD subset of data could be
> added later if necessary (export list of users agreeing to PD would
> make this possible).
> And as wikipedia offers their complete dump with entire history, we
> maybe can offer planet dump with entire history in it too, so it could
> be easier to pick up only the PD contributions (or basically to dig
> through history for any reason without querying the main server)

OpenStreetMap has in a way advertised that users can decide to dual-license
their data.  I mean thes PD template system in the wiki
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:Users_whose_contributions_are_in_the_public_domain

In the beginning I thought that was a real alternative, but discovered soon that
it was just a manifestation.  I believe that majority of OSM users does not even
like the idea of asking users now if they actually think that their data could
well be in public domain.  PD mappers just have better to do mapping with JOSM
and save their incontestable edits as an own local copy for the future needs to
be uploaded into OSM PD-repository or something.  Main OSM database is not a
place to store PD data to be extracted out afterwards. I suppose it is not even
OK to add POIs with Potlatch and read them back to JOSM for making a local copy.

One question:  All edits of PD mappers could of course be tranferred under the
new license even without asking us.  But is is possible to connect our PD
declarations in the wiki with our OSM data in a reliable way so that the tranfer
could be automatic?  User names used for mapping and in the wiki are not the
same thing, or are they? However, wasting PD data just because the author can
perhaps not be contacted feels silly.