[OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Isn't All That Open, Let's Change That and Drop Share-Alike

[Tobias Knerr]

On 14.03.2014 23:21, moltonel 3x Combo wrote:
> There's one fairly obvious to me : the share-alike requirement is
> necessary to enforce the attribution requirement (otherwise any user
> could just change the license to one that doesn't require
> attribution).

It would not be legal for them to get rid of the attribution like that.
Attribution requirements can exist without share-alike, see e.g. CC-BY.

I believe that arrangement would also be the sweet spot for OSM.

> The user's best interest is the carrot, but the license is the stick.
> There's no harm using both, it's actually better.

If having a stick didn't cost us anything, that would obviously be true.
But this discussion came about because our stick also hits good users
quite a lot. So if the carrot works pretty well by itself, perhaps we
should get rid of the stick after all.