[OSM-talk] [Osmf-talk] [Talk-us] license changes

[Christoph Hormann]

On Tuesday 23 February 2016, Simon Poole wrote:
>
> - review of the existing OSM community guidelines related to the ODbL
> - ODbL review with an eye to a 1.1 release (gather points for
> clarification and similar)
> - review CC-BY 4.0 compatibility as an input licence to the ODbL
> licensed databases
> - sub-licensing in the ODbL and CC licences
> - a treaty on the "can I be sued by an OSM contributor" issue
> - grace periods in the CC and ODbL licences

These are very good topics i think - not only because they are highly 
relevant for the OSM community but also since they are at the same time 
suited for a student to work on.

> Naturally OSM-US is completely free to discuss whatever it wants with
> whomever it wants, but that works the other way around too.

Indeed - and in this context it is hairy if OSM-US implies relevance of 
the results for the OSMF and the global OSM community - as done for 
example in the final paragraph of [1]:

"Your final analysis should take the form of an options memo to the OSMF 
License Working Group and OSMF Board with a recommendation as to the 
best approach or approaches."

At best this is a recipe for students/law school for making a fool of 
themselves (if i was a teacher at that law school i'd kick such project 
out for being highly unsuited for student work) and an obstacle in 
future open discourse of the OSM community (see Frederiks remarks 
regarding 'what we want').

At worst it is a blatant attempt to influence future discourse by 
implying whatever options suggested are actually in any way more 
relevant than other possibilities.

But as you said ultimately this is of course between OSM-US and that law 
school - and they are also free to make recommendations to whoever they 
want to.

[1] 
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q89ImYlJd4Jm1E9JYL5lpcLGiZDbvYpYg5Vazdg_A2w/edit

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/