[OSM-talk] Partnership between OSM and local government?

Frederik Ramm frederik at remote.org
Wed Sep 22 08:30:15 BST 2010


Hi,

John Smith wrote:
>> planned license change (we don't usually go into detail unless of course
>> someone requests it - we just say that OSM is committed to free and open
>> licenses always).
> 
> Do they understand that may include no attribution in future?

Convincing someone to give you date is a bit like sales. We're not lying 
to people but we're not trying to scare them either. We're not saying 
things like: "Do you understand that giving data to us might ruin any 
future business model you might think of?", and neither to we ask them 
to read through CC-BY-SA, ODbL, CT & OSMF's articles of association 
("I'm sorry but I cannot accept your data before you are perfectly clear 
about everything...").

Of course if it would be my *intent* to let such a discussion fail 
because of the license, scaring them away would be easy, with any 
license. Personally I think the share-alike component has the most 
potential to scare them ("do you understand that if you re-incorporate 
any of the good stuff we add into your databases, you will have to 
license all of them under the following license which has been thought 
out by a bunch of Americans?").

> In Australia, from what I've been told, attribution is a must and
> there is no way any government body will accept anything less.

Most people we've spoken to are happy if we can put out a press release 
that says "XYZ council helps OpenStreetMap" and if we have a Wiki page 
that confirms it. The would get that even with PD.

Of course YMMV and there will always be hard cases who demand a depth of 
attribution that even (our fashion of) CC-BY-SA cannot give them. But 
that's not too bad because we don't depend on Government data; it's just 
a nice add-on.

Bye
Frederik

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



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