[OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

[andrzej zaborowski]

On 20 April 2011 07:13, Russ Nelson <nelson en crynwr.com> wrote:
> Mike  Dupont writes:
>  > how can you take a cc-by-sa document edit it and publish it under pd?
>  > can I just make derived works in any license i want?
>
> Well, that's part of the problem here. How do we determine what is
> someone's work, and what is a derived work?  If I take a way that
> someone has entered (poorly), and I move each and every node, and fix
> the speling on the name of the way, whose creative work is it?  (one
> could easily argue that the other person was the one being "creative"
> whereas my work is merely a fact about the world, but I'm not going to
> make that argument here).

I don't see this as a real problem.  I'm sure you'd agree that if all
of the authors accept a new license then the whole element is safe to
put under the new license.  So what you're really saying by submitting
edits under the new CTs is that you authorise whoever to use your
modification under the given license, not the osm entity.  You
authrise osmf to publish the data under the new license provided that
other authors do the same.

(this is not written in the CTs but I think Francis Davey implied that
this is how it could be understood even in a legal case)

>
> We don't really know the answer to that, which makes this whole
> "license changing screw the community, we know better" exercize a piss
> in a pot.

Agreed.

Cheers