[OSM-legal-talk] Community norms (was: ODbL and publishing source data)
Frederik Ramm frederik@... writes: I am interested in exploring this further with the aim of finding good community norms, nailing down the problem cases, and making the introduction of ODbL for OSM a success. I think you have to be careful about going too far with community norms. They may give the misleading impression that copyright holders have endorsed them so that they are legal statements of what you can do with the map, but this is not the case. Also, the contributor terms permit distribution under ODbL, not 'ODbL with community norms', so it would not be within OSMF's mandate under the CTs to introduce additional material to the licence, however well- intentioned. Community norms can serve to narrow the permission (as in: although X may be permissible according to the letter of the law, we don't feel it fits the spirit) but they cannot state anything with authority where the underlying legal situation is unclear. More to the point, would it not be better to fix up ambiguities in a new version of the ODbL? Migrating to it later would be pretty painless since the licence is forward-compatible. -- Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Community norms
Hi, On 11/29/11 11:49, Ed Avis wrote: I think you have to be careful about going too far with community norms. Of course. They must not introduce new material, but they can be used to clarify areas where things aren't crystal clear. Community norms can serve to narrow the permission (as in: although X may be permissible according to the letter of the law, we don't feel it fits the spirit) but they cannot state anything with authority where the underlying legal situation is unclear. OSMF is the holder of the database rights; while OSMF may not be able to state anything with authority they can certainly say we guarantee that we will not sue you if you adhere to the following. Which is good enough. More to the point, would it not be better to fix up ambiguities in a new version of the ODbL? Migrating to it later would be pretty painless since the licence is forward-compatible. Yes, certainly. Any community norms we set up should be considered an input to possible future versions of ODbL. We have to be clear, however, that ODbL is not specifically intended for our situation, so the ODbL authors may decide not to include things that are too specific. For example, our community guideline about what is and isn't substantial uses a spatial definition that will certainly not apply to all ODbL licensed datasets. Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Community norms
Frederik Ramm frederik@... writes: OSMF is the holder of the database rights; while OSMF may not be able to state anything with authority they can certainly say we guarantee that we will not sue you if you adhere to the following. Which is good enough. I think that database right is only a small part of the picture, copyright being at least as important (if the legal advice I got from Francis Davey relating to European law is correct). Note that there is sui generis database right, and separate from that there is database copyright. Database copyright is not owned by the OSMF. -- Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
