Puneet Kishor wrote:
Lots of people are looking for ways to clearly mark their data. Trust
me on that one, lots of people. The world of scientific data is not
entirely made up of geographic data, and certainly not of Open Street
Map
You say "not entirely". Where OSM is concerned, I'd say "not at all".
OSM data is principally used in the commercial environment and in
volunteer / enthusiast projects. There is, to the best of my
knowledge, no significant use or origination of OSM data in the
scientific environment. It isn't intended as scientific data and isn't
used as such.
This makes a difference because, as I wrote two years ago at
http://www.opengeodata.org/2008/01/07/the-licence-where-we-are-where-were-going/
:
In the science world, for which this [Science Commons] protocol is
intended, citation is an everyday part of life. Learned articles
will always cite those whose work they are building on, and will be
disregarded by peers if they don't. When Science Commons speak of a
"non-legally binding set of citation norms", they can do so in the
expectation that these norms will be respected. SC's John Wilbanks
says as much in this interesting post: "It seemed we had to think
about taking all these social goals and moving them outside the
legal world, and into the world that scientists controlled - norms."
That isn't necessarily the case with geographical data. If a big
mapping company like TeleAtlas or Navteq were to use OSM contributors'
work in their data, there's no commercial imperative for them to credit
us - let alone to make the rest of their data available on our
terms. Our work will be used outside the world that we control.
So CC may not like the ODbL approach. Indeed, John later wrote at
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/legal-talk/2009-March/002318.html
:
But when you call the license written by and for a streetmapping
community a solution for the rest of the world when the DBs and
norms involved vary so much...well, it's odd to then get mad when
the rest of the world comes in and comments on it
Which is a fair point, but it cuts both ways. If CC is only interested
in catering for the scientific data community, that's fine; but by the
same reasoning, it should make it explicit that it does not provide,
let alone recommend, any particular licence or disclaimer for data
outside the scientific community.
To get back to the original argument, my personal view is that neither
CC, nor OKFN, nor FSF or whoever should offer NC options with any of
their licenses. Discriminating against a field of endeavour isn't
"open", you might as well have a "no-copying" licence. But that's not
the same as saying CC0 should be the only game in town for factual data.
cheers
Richard
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