[OSM-talk] Licence of Facebook's derived road datasets? ODbL?

[Martin Trautmann]

On 19-11-15 12:38, Christoph Hormann wrote:

> Because the basis of most comments made does not seem to be the desire 
> to neutrally assess the situation Rory presents here and its 
> implications.  This would usually go by considering what if Rory is 
> right and data productions like this would be subject to the ODbL as 
> well as the other way round by considering what if Rory is wrong and 
> you could distribute data sets like this under any license you want.

That's probably because it's a legal question.

Everyone has the right for his right opinion. But whether that's right -
in legal terms! -  that can be very difficult to answer.

You can argue from the point of "common sense" or from the engineering
view of logical arguing. But both of it can be irrelevant and just the
opposite of what the letter of the law will be.

And jurists don't have the need to read and reply on this list.

When you ask them whether they want coffee or tea, they will charge you
three digits numbers before giving you an answer.

> I am not really interested in participating in this kind of interest 
> negotiation - because (a) the results do not depend on who has the best 
> arguments but on who can invest the most time and manpower into the 
> discussion and (b) the results would not actually be an objectively 
> better or more accurate understanding of the situation.

So then you should avoid reading topics like this on the list.
You won't be able to prevent that someone will ask questions like this -
although it will require people with legal skills to handle them properly.

However, discussing topics like this outside court room, you may learn
and gain expertise which may help for further discussions.

> From an engineering perspective the idea that adding OSM data can create 
> a derivative database but subtracting OSM data cannot does not hold up 
> of course.  I can create a polygon data set of the Earth surface (a 
> simple rectangle in EPSG:4326) and subtract an OSM derived data set of 
> the Earth land masses from that to get a data set of the oceans.  
> According to the hypothesis this would not be subject to the ODbL.

From the engineering perspective it is obvious, because the exlusive
amount of data obviously ist just a NOT of the given data.

For a legal person it's not the opposite - in fact for him it is the
absolute proof that it is not derived, because exactly nothing of it is
within the data.

Giving you the example from above, from the view of a programming
engineer or mathematician: when you ask them whether they want coffee OR
tea, they might answer YES - because they want either coffee or tea or
they don't mind whether it's coffee or tea or both. So how does this
answer help your question?

So although you and we and they do use the same words, they do not have
the same meaning.

> This realization (of there being no fundamental difference between 
> subtracting and adding) is - as Rory already explained - not dependent 
> on specific details of the ODbL or the law but derives from elementary 
> logic.

No. Elementary logic does not apply for legal advice. You must first
convert the question to proper legal terminology - and then translate
back the answer to terms that we can understand.

Schönen Gruß
Martin

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