[OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

Chris Fleming me at chrisfleming.org
Sun Jul 18 16:03:01 BST 2010


  On 17/07/10 20:40, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Michael Barabanov wrote:
>> A poll could be something like: "Would you find a it acceptable if 
>> OSMF relicensed the whole dataset to ODBL without any data loss".
>
> It should really be "Would you find it acceptable if OSMF relicensed 
> the whole dataset to ODbL without asking for consent from individual 
> contributors, thereby making sure that there is no data loss, but 
> disregarding individuals who might be against the change?"
>
> If OSMF were to do that, they would likely be sued by a number of 
> principled objectors; we'd have to factor in a legal budget to deal 
> with that. It should not be too much because those legal advisers that 
> have told us that the CC-BY-SA would likely not hold in court would 
> simply have to tell the judge the same ;)
>
> Problem is, the principled objectors could also decline to sue OSMF 
> and instead threaten to sue users of OSM data that contains their 
> contributions. *We* believe such threats to be empty, but consider our 
> users - one of the reasons for ODbL is to achieve a legal certainty 
> about using our data. Would all this not lead to people *again* shying 
> away from OSM for fear of some poisoned bits of data?
>
I don't think that Michael was actually proposing that we actually do 
this, more just use it to get an idea of if people agree to the 
principle of moving to ODbL if the "data loss" issue wasn't an issue.

I think that the majority would, there will be a few exceptions but IMHO 
ODbL is a much better license. From what I can tell most of the current 
descent is around what to do about CC-BY-SA data imports where the 
provider can't or won't relicense, or contributers that we can't contact.

Cheers
Chris




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