[OSM-talk] Using editors to indicate license preference.

[SteveC]

On Jan 17, 2010, at 6:37 PM, John Smith wrote:

> 2010/1/18 Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com>:
>> On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 22:31, Roy Wallace <waldo000000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 1:46 AM, John Smith <deltafoxtrot256 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 2010/1/18 DavidD <thewinch at gmail.com>:
>>>>> OSM has masses of CC-BY-SA data and contributors. How will the PD
>>>>> people deal with that? Start replacing the existing CC-BY-SA data and
>>>>> reverting any edits to PD data by CC-BY-SA contributors?
>>>> 
>>>> The point more is for new data, than existing
>>> 
>>> If this is only applicable to "new data", why not upload that to a
>>> separate server, and later import it into OSM as necessary?
>>> 
>>> I'm not even sure that any contribution to OSM can really be called
>>> "new data", as most "new" data will be "created with reference to a
>>> point Y that was share-alike licensed and thus becomes a derived work"
>>> - as Frederik pointed out.
>> 
>> For what it's worth the OSMF legal counsel does not agree that data is
>> viral in this way:
>> 
>> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Closed_Issues#Features_touched_by_multiple_contributors.2C_not_all_of_whom_sign_up_to_new_terms
>> 
> 
> That page is probably erring on the side of caution, but it states
> that cc-by-sa probably doesn't count against geo data and then goes on
> to say anyone not agreeing to cc-by-sa will have to have their data
> removed...
> 
> Either cc-by-sa is valid and is enforcible and the information should
> be removed, or it isn't enforcible and the cc-by-sa data can
> transition without any problems...

You're being very logical and geeky, but ignoring the social element here. Ignoring CC and just pulling the data in might satisfy you but would then annoy a far greater set of people who we should at least honor the ideals with which they signed up and contributed data, even if the letter of the law we can't enforce.

I'm personally thinking at this stage that a better solution would be for the license move to ODbL to include a fork as part of the agreement, so everyone contributes their data as both ODbL and/or PD, not just move to ODbL. We could host a PD or CC0 server alongside the ODbL one and just see which dataset grows more quickly. I think Google and others will quickly rape the PD server while the ODbL server will have a process which is either manual or automated to pull in the PD data and will always be the better map. Would that make the PD crowd happy? Personally I don't see it as much different to just working for Google and TomTom for free.

Yours &c.

Steve