Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Explicitly adding some licenses in 4.4 iii
Rob Myers schrieb: > On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 1:35 PM, Philipp Klaus Krause <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: >> One of the main problems with sharealike/copyleft is the large number of >> incompatible licenses. I suggest explicitly adding some important such >> licenses to 4.4 iii, so we don't lock too many other free communities >> out from using OSM data. > > This is a problem but the licence authors are working on it. > >> At least the most common ones like GPLv2 or later, LGPL, GFDL and >> CC-BY-SA should be added. > > This will make things worse rather than better as it will fork some > OSM derivatives into four different incompatible streams. > I don't think this will make forks more likely. Thinking of the use cases I mentioned I think people will improve OSM to suit their needs, then create the flyer/movie/whatever as a derived work from both the OSM data and something else. The flyer wouldn't make sense to somehow merge back into OSM anyway. Philipp ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Circumnavigating Share-Alike through software / now and future
On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 9:45 PM, Rob Myers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The scenario that you describe looks similar to the "distributing > proprietary object files for end users to link with GPL software" > exploit that I think was explicitly tackled in GPL 3. This scenario > should have been known to CC when they were drafting their licences, > and I'd hope they addressed it. How did they tackle it? It seems to be one of those class 1 vs class 2 errors. Your set of rules will either allow things it shouldn't, or disallow things it should. Its very hard to avoid both cases. I think that happens because we're moving away from writing what we actually want the license to say. Instead we're trying to write a legalese approximation to it. It will never say the same thing. I think we want to say: "We want people to share back improvements to the map when practically possible. Bigmegaevilcorp can't use our maps at all unless they stop being so darn evil first." Instead our license reads like: "when making a derivative work, you have to share it back in this case, but not this case. Research is ok. DRM is not ok. Certain other open source projects can use our stuff. Other mapping providers can't combine our stuff with theirs unless they share their work too or sacrifice a goat in a full moon on their database cluster" I also worry that some of these use cases could be written multiple ways: "a poor research student wants to make maps like this" vs "big evilmegacorp wants to make maps like this" and people will interpret them as positive or negative examples based on the student vs megacorp rather than on how they're using the maps. If we invent an arbitrary set of rules which match our attempted positive / negative examples rather than based on the principles on which the license is theoretically based, we will end up with a bad license. Certainly in software, designing like this always leads to brittle code that isn't able to handle any of the edge conditions you forgot to test for. Robust code is made by writing what you mean, not just writing what you want the computer to do. The classic example of this is the GPL. Stallman originally said "I want any software which builds on my software to maintain these basic freedoms". Then they wrote the GPL which instead reads: "anything derivative works must use this exact license" - a statement that sounds similar but is perversely different in complex and confounding ways. -J > - Rob. > > ___ > legal-talk mailing list > legal-talk@openstreetmap.org > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk > ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Circumnavigating Share-Alike through software / now and future
On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 6:00 PM, Frederik Ramm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Obviously. But I was not talking about restricting the rights of the OSM > data distributed alongside the proprietary data; the super secret data > set company would of course allow you to do anything with the OSM > extract they give you. They would just restrict their own data. Or, in > CC-BY-SA license terms, they would give you a collective work (a CD-ROM, > say), that has OSM data and proprietary data sitting alongside each other. If it's a way of trying to make a non-redistributable derivative at arms length, I think it's very difficult to get around BY-SA. Of course the company could just claim fair use. Google seem to get away with that while making lots of money. ;-) > Ok, we can make that change; it would probably not be too much to ask > from the super secret data set company to build some automatic OSM > downloader into their software. I imagine that would be similar to Napster. > That's an interesting point we are getting to here - the distinction > between the end user creating a derivative of his own volition versus > the end user being sort-of "guided" (or even tricked?) into making a > derivative. Yes this is the key distinction. It absolutely should be possible for you to be able to make a mash up of OSM data and whatever else in the privacy of your own home. But it should also not be easy for a third party to be able to force you to make a derivative of a BY-SA that removes the rights that BY-SA is meant to ensure are inalienable. > Probably extremely hard to find sharp wording for. "If you > create a software with the primary aim of making derived works from OSM > and another data source, you must make sure that the other data source > is licensed such that the derived work can be distributed..." - but that > would go much too far, it would for example make it impossible for > anyone to write a generic GDAL OSM importer or an OSM importer for > Google Earth! Yes I see your point. > In the end this is nothing else than what we're doing with the > "layering" stuff right now. If someone says they want to display > proprietary data alongside OSM, our answer is they can use something > like an OpenLayers interface which we count as a "collected" work where > each layer may be licensed differently. However, the end product on the > user's screen is surely a derived work (imagine him making a screenshot > and publishing it!). This, too, is a case where the creation of the > derivative is pushed down to the end user: He may view both data sources > on top of each other, but he may not re-publish what he sees. The layers compromise is a consensual haullucination of OSM. ;-) The scenario that you describe looks similar to the "distributing proprietary object files for end users to link with GPL software" exploit that I think was explicitly tackled in GPL 3. This scenario should have been known to CC when they were drafting their licences, and I'd hope they addressed it. - Rob. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] More free data and share-alike morality bumf
IANAL, TINLA. On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 11:53 PM, Simon Ward <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I'd rather it need not be legally binding, just automatic. The problem > is that the laws to restrict exist at all, not the philosophy behind > keeping things free. The laws that do or do not restrict data are different from those that restrict software and cultural works. Data may or may not involve a copyright and may or may not involve a database right. This varies at least by jurisdiction. Geodata providers therefore often use contract law rather than "intellectual property" law to make their data proprietary. > Please note that if I give you free software, you do not have to give me > anything at all in return. You don't even have to give me anything if > you give it to someone else, you are simply obliged by the license that > if you redistribute it (including derivatives), you redistribute enough > for it to be useful for the next person to have the same freedoms you > do. In particular, if you don't receive the binary you have no claim to the source. This gets obscured by the fact that most people just bung the source on a public VCS or file server, but they don't have to do this. It may look like SA works require sharing more broadly than the GPL, but SA only requires that members of the audience be able to copy the work. This is comparable to only users of software being able to get the source. > In addition the GPL at least is explicitly not a contract, and I'm not > sure making the data licence a contract is a good idea either, though I > don't have enough understanding to authoritatively say so, and neither > the contacts or money to get the legal advice. My lay person's understanding is that there may not be rights on the data(base) in every jurisdiction that can be licenced so a contract may be neccessary. Geodata providers are already doing this, and the proposed licence would ironise this restriction in much the same way that the GPL ironises copyright. Contract restrictions on Geodata are not universal in the same way as copyright is, but they are restrictions. - Rob. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
