On 4 January 2011 23:33, Richard Fairhurst <rich...@systemed.net> wrote: > > Robert Whittaker (OSM) wrote: >>> That is true. If OSMF wanted to release the data as PD, it would have >>> to delete any OS OpenData-derived content first. >> However, is there any guarantee that OSMF will remove such data >> first? > > I'm not quite sure I see your point. There's no guarantee that the OSMF > board won't infringe the OS OpenData licence, sure, but there's also no > guarantee that the OSMF board won't go berserk and start gunning down > Google's executives. Both would be illegal. There are already laws about not > shooting Google executives - we don't need to explicitly add them to the > Contributor Terms.
Setting aside clause 1 of the new revision of the contributor terms ( https://docs.google.com/View?id=dd9g3qjp_933xs7nvfb&pli=1 ) as that seems to conflict with the later terms, it's my understanding that clauses 2-4 have the following effect: Clause 2 requires contributors to make a large grant of IP rights to OSMF on any content added to OSM. I believe that the intent here is actually that you only grant OSMF the rights necessary for them to act as described in clauses 3 and 4. (A strict reading would say that you need to grant them all the rights, and in return they agree only to use them as described in clauses 3 and 4 -- this stricter interpretation is problematic as it would mean you could essentially only add PD data, or data that IP owners had given explicit permission for, but this is by-the-by for the current argument.) Lets now consider what rights are necessary for OSMF to act as described in clauses 3 and 4. Since the data will be initially distributed under CC-By-SA and ODbL, you must have sufficient rights to allow the data you contribute to be distributed in this way. Since there is also the possibility of OSM content later being distributed under a license that requires no downstream attribution or share-alike provisions, then you must have sufficient rights to be able to give that right to so distribute the data to OSMF. So if the license you have data under contains share-alike or viral-attribution clauses then you do not have the necessary rights to grant to OSMF, and therefore it cannot be contributed under the terms of clause 2. However, I'm not sure how clause 1 fits into this. Regardless of what is says about not having to guarantee that the data is compatible with current or future licenses, clause 2 still requires you to grant OSMF rights that would make it so. The only obvious resolution I can see is if clause 2 is meant to refer only to the contributor's own IP rights in the contents they submit -- but that's not what the current wording says: "You hereby grant to OSMF a ... licence to do any act ... over anything within the Contents". If it is meant to only cover the contributor's own IP rights in the submitted contents, then I think the wording needs top be clarified. But then I'd be happy that you'd be able to use OS OpenData under those CTs. (Though I still think it's debatable whether the OS OpenData License is compatible with ODbL -- the last I heard directly from OS is that they consider that it isn't. But that's sort of irrelevant if the CTs don't require you to guarantee it. And hopefully OS will switch to the new Open Government License soon, which is explicitly compatible with ODbL.) -- Robert Whittaker _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
