Why are we changing the licence? Well [1] states among other things that "
[CC-BY-SA] is therefore very difficult to interpret", and we have indeed
seen this situation occur many times when people have asked what can and
can't be done with OSM data, and no definitive answer could be found.
If it was unclear if something was allowed under CC-BY-SA then users of our
data were asked to take a cautious approach. And that seems very reasonable
stance to take, even though it resulted in a lower than hoped for use of OSM
data. So it was decided that since even the OSM community could not
categorically say how CC-BY-SA applied to OSM data a licence change was
needed.
Move forward a bit and we start to implement the new licence. Since we
could not reach consensus on how CC-By-SA applied to "our" data, it seems
reasonable to assume that we can not assume how CC-BY-SA data applies to
other people data, and therefor to be safe I presume we won't simply be
blindly importing CC-BY-SA data into OSM. I presume we will be approaching
providers of data that has a CC-BY-SA licence and asking if we can use that
data in OSM. So our permission to use the data will stem not from a
CC-BY-SA licence, but from the explicit permission given by the copyright
holder.
Or am I missing something?
Furthermore if we don't approach CC-BY-SA providers and ask if we can use
their data, then we are using it by virtue of the fact it is CC-BY-SA, and
surely the CC-BY-SA permissions "flow though into" the OSM data. In which
case nothing has been gained from the licence change process as the same
permissions which were there before (and were difficult to interpret) still
exist.
Apologies if this has been discussed before, but I cant see anything about
it on the implementation plan [2]
David
[1]
http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/We_Are_Changing_The_License#Why_are_we_changing_the_license.3F
[2]
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Database_License/Implementation_Plan
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