[OSM-talk] Branding?

[Robin Paulson]

On 2013-02-23 09:05, Simon Poole wrote:
> A trademark and other IP use policy is one of the things the new OSMF

How do we reconcile relatively permissive use of the OSM database, with 
relatively restrictive use of the Open Street Map name? For the moment, 
I put to one side Stallman's argument that "there is no such thing as 
intellectual property" [1].

It is contradictory to say one part of Open Street Map's intellectual 
property (the database) can be freely used, inspected, redistributed and 
modified, while another part (the name) cannot.

Why is one shared, given away, while the other is guarded, coveted, 
owned, protected, monopolised?

Of the four strands of intellectual property, three are willingly 
shared by and amongst digital commons projects: copyrightable material, 
databases and patents. The latter is an odd case in that publishing it 
means it can't be monopolised, but the end result is the same: neither 
of these three is owned and locked away from the rest of the world.

The other strand, trademarks, is locked away by the various relevant 
projects. Any suggestions why? Or why we should continue to do this?

[1] http://www.gnu.org/doc/fsfs-ii-2.pdf

-- 
robin

http://universitywithoutconditions.ac.nz - Auckland's Free University