[OSM-talk] licence plan - Question about supplying own data

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

SteveC wrote:
> One of the things I didn't mention in my long post an that most of you 
> clearly don't understand is that a court takes *intent* in to account as 
> guidence in any license dispute. So like case law you can spend all the 
> time you like reading the letter of the license but if the intent was 
> clearly elsewhere *it doesn't matter*.

All the time you say that we mere humans should not talk legalese but 
leave this to the lawyers.

But if it were all about intent, then we could just write a document in 
plain English and use that.

In fact I think that in many jurisdictions this would actually give us 
the same level of "protection" than a longish "license" with the added 
benefit that everybody can understand our intent, whereas - proof is on 
odc-discuss where there are some people who read the ODbL out of OSM 
context! - it seems that reading ODbL is not enough to understand our 
intent.

>> That "feature" is something that was introduced without so much as a
>> word from anyone between the April 2008 and the 0.9 drafts. If this were
>> intentional, then someone had to hang for trying to deceive the
>> community.
> 
> You're doing it again - jumping to the conclusion that it was all Evil 
> Jordan or Evil Steve.

No. I am truly, honestly assuming that this is a blunder that nobody 
noticed. The previous license draft said quite clearly that if you 
publicly "use" a database, which included making a Produced Work (it was 
called differently then but that doesn't matter) then you would have to 
make the database available.

The new version introduced the word "convey" instead of "use", which is 
not a big deal, but then defined "convey" as "not applying to making 
Produced Works".

In doing so, the license went 180° - from forcing people to make 
available a derived database on which they built Produced Works to not 
forcing them to do so. All the time, proponents of the license change 
(which, you might be surprised to see, include me), argued to the 
hardcore share-alikers: "You don't get protection of Produced Works but 
you get share-alike for interim databases which is much more in line 
with what we want". This has been, and still is, a fundamental point, an 
argument without I could not justify ODbL to these people.

It seems absolutely inconceivable that someone *knowingly* made such a 
huge change and not even bothered to tell anyone. Even with my mild 
degree of paranoia, it still seems absolutely inconceivable.

That's why I write "if this were intentional, someone had to hang for 
trying to deceive the community". If someone, anyone, really thought 
"hey, I'll make this change and nobody will notice that this will nicely 
drop database share-alike for improved data on which Produced Works are 
built, so that I can, in the future, add my own improvements, publish 
cool images, and never share my improvements"; if anyone really was that 
devious, that would be absolutely beyond the pale and that person should 
not be allowed to say the words "OpenStreetMap" or "community" ever again.

But believe it or not, I don't think that there was such a secret agenda 
on anyone's part. I think it simply has been overlooked. I have just 
spent two weeks amid printed paper finalising the second edition of our 
OSM book and I know perfectly well how easy it is to change a meaning on 
page 3 by rewording something on page 1, and not noticing it until the 
proofreader paints it red.

The ODbL has been proofread, the problem has been painted red, and I am 
sure it will be fixed. It *must* be fixed, because otherwise ODbL is 
dead for OSM; you can claim that intent matters all you want, but you 
will never be able to get a license past the Share-Alike fraction that 
allows improvements to our data to be kept privy.

And you know I couldn't care less for share-alike, it would all be PD 
and up for grabs if it were me, but this is a political process much 
more than it is anything else!

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"