Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA
Richard Fairhurst wrote: Tordanik wrote: I see that the ODbL fits your particular use case nicely. But as you acknowledge, things look different for people with other use cases. I expect that I'm one of those people whose favourite use cases won't benefit from ODbL - quite the opposite, in fact. I can certainly see your issues. But I think that this is what Steve was talking about in the SOTM-EU keynote when he said let's move to ODbL and sort out the details in v2. And why the hurry? It seems premature to consider discontinuing CC-BY-SA database publication while there are still major problems with the suggested replacement. None of what you've highlighted is insuperable. I did mention some exclusive benefits of CC-BY-SA in my original mail, such as the popularity of the license that is impossible to match for ODbL, and the relative complexity compared with ODbL. Both are consequences of the very idea of ODbL (a license specifically for databases, using various legal constructs in addition to copyright for enforcing its requirements), and cannot be fixed completely. But even to address my immediate concerns, several concessions would need to be included in the community guidelines, for example that * software which is freely available (at no cost, without discrimination) can be considered a given by the method description * databases which are available under an ODbL-compatible license can also be considered a given by the method description * publication of a produced work can be continued indefinitely even if the means (software/databases) to reproduce the derivative database cease to be publicly available * informal descriptions can be sufficient in straightforward cases, such as referring to an unmodified program with obvious configuration by its name only. The goal of all this would be to let the creator of a produced work get away with an one-line attribution text similar to CC-BY-SA's in those cases where all software and data used in the process is publicly available anyway. Of course, giving the creator the option to choose CC-BY-SA would instantly achieve this goal. ;) So I wouldn't advocate CC-BY-SA or ODbL for the project; I think ODbL is a better way of providing share-alike. But personally, I'd not be upset if we ended up with dual-licensing, because it's slightly closer to public domain. Thank you for clarifying this, I was a bit confused about your position before. -- Tobias Knerr ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA
On 27/07/11 16:43, Tobias Knerr wrote: And why the hurry? If this is a hurry I'd hate to see stalling. :-) - Rob. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA
Ed Avis wrote: Interesting slip... of course I meant to say 'contacting'... :) So are there cases where people are thumbing their nose at the licence, but somehow if we used ODbL they would fall into line? Couldn't tell you that without reading their minds! I honestly don't know how many infringers are saying let's use this data, they'll never know, how many don't realise they're doing wrong, and how many just don't understand the licence. It's probably a bit of all three. I slightly suspect that ODbL's contract pillar makes it more enforceable than CC's copyright-only approach (there are more contract lawyers than copyright specialists). But even if that's true, and you'd need much finer minds than mine to pronounce on it, that's not really my point. Rather, it's this: in the absence of enforcement, good guys will comply with the licence voluntarily, and bad guys won't. Because ODbL's share-alike is more appropriate to data, it allows people to create produced works - a freedom not afforded by CC-BY-SA. (It also imposes additional requirements, of course, notably the derivative source requirement.) So let's assume neither licence is going to be fully enforced in every single circumstance. (That's surely a given; there are only so many hours in the day and so many things we can spot.) That means CC-BY-SA is restricting the good guys, not the bad guys. ODbL, in the produced work case, is not restricting the good guys. If you believe that produced works are a worthwhile freedom to offer, and I do, then the current situation favours the bad guys. (Of course, if you follow this argument to its extreme, then you end up with CC0+community norms... and though I was originally sceptical about that approach, the way in which infringing use is spiralling beyond even our ability to track it has made me rethink.) cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/OSM-legal-talk-A-case-for-CT-CC-BY-SA-tp6613895p6618044.html Sent from the Legal Talk mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA
On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Richard Fairhurst rich...@systemed.netwrote: Rather, it's this: in the absence of enforcement, good guys will comply with the licence voluntarily, and bad guys won't. In the absence of enforcement they good guys will comply with the license if they can. If the terms are onerous then even the good guys will fail to comply. ODbL is way too onerous. Firstly it's not easy to understand what would be required for compliance (the language is unclear and even the best available advice is conflicting) and secondly if the requirement is for a database then it's impractical in many cases. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA
Richard Fairhurst wrote: I'm a good guy, I'd hope; I've given years of my life to OSM, and contributed a lot to the community (hardcore JOSM users may see fit to disagree ;) ). Despite that OSM offers nothing to me, because CC-BY-SA's share-alike clause is defined in relation to creative works, not to data. That means my particular niche (hand-drawn, highly specialised cartography, requiring days of work for a small set of maps) works fine with Ordnance Survey OpenData, but not with OSM. If I were someone writing routing software, whose endeavour is not caught within the arbitrary application of CC-BY-SA share-alike to OSM, I'm sure I'd feel differently. I see that the ODbL fits your particular use case nicely. But as you acknowledge, things look different for people with other use cases. I expect that I'm one of those people whose favourite use cases won't benefit from ODbL - quite the opposite, in fact. My personal niche in the realm of OSM products are 3D models. My vision is to build applications that let people explore models of the world and create products such as virtual panoramas, animations, or even simulator game scenarios, with no more than a few clicks. Users of these applications would not be limited to downloading pre-made models from a server and looking at them, but should be able to configure model generation as they see fit and have it instantly performed by their computer. If I'm not mistaken, this use case highlights several of the ODbL's downsides: * Complexity: This is particularly bad when non-specialists create produced works (e.g. screenshots), and the tool they use creates derivative databases in the process. * Unclear distinction between database and produced work: Illustrated by 3D models, which are yet another it depends case. * Skewed balance between effort for sharing databases and sharing products: A database of a virtual environment can be much larger and harder to publish than the short flying over my hometown Youtube clip produced from that database. * Unclear method of making the alterations alternative: This seems hard to apply to GUI-centred software. Strictly speaking, this would also force users of the application from my use case example to ensure continued availability of the SRTM database (additional Contents) and the program (part of the algorithm) as long as they want to continue publication of their produced work. You said CC-BY-SA is also a license that few current mappers should hate so much that they cannot stand to be part of a project that uses it. For the past three years I've stayed here partly in the hope that we'll move to ODbL, and partly out of inertia because OS OpenData wasn't available three years ago. The day that it's decided that we're staying with CC-BY-SA is the day I quit the project. I hope that you could still be convinced to accept a dual licensing solution that makes the database available under both ODbL and CC-BY-SA? If your goal is to eliminate legal barriers that make it hard for you to use OSM data the way you want, then I can understand your position - I'm doing the same thing right now, except for a different use case and therefore with different requirements. Trying to take existing options away from friendly data users, though - and an ODbL-only solution would involve that - is something that I can neither truly understand nor support. -- Tobias Knerr ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA
Tordanik wrote: I see that the ODbL fits your particular use case nicely. But as you acknowledge, things look different for people with other use cases. I expect that I'm one of those people whose favourite use cases won't benefit from ODbL - quite the opposite, in fact. I can certainly see your issues. But I think that this is what Steve was talking about in the SOTM-EU keynote when he said let's move to ODbL and sort out the details in v2. None of what you've highlighted is insuperable. They either require, IMHO (and I'm certainly not an authority on these things), a small wording change in ODbL 1.1, or a well-formed community guideline on our part. I suspect, for example, that looking closely at machine-readable in ODbL 4.6 would get us a long way. But fixing ODbL to remove implementation bugs will be a lot easier than making CC-BY-SA appropriate for data. I hope that you could still be convinced to accept a dual licensing solution that makes the database available under both ODbL and CC-BY-SA? Oddly enough I've just answered this one in private mail to someone so I'll repost my message here. :) My well-documented personal preference is for public domain (or attribution-only). So if you have two licences with differing share-alike permissions, and you dual-license the data under them, then you're providing it with more freedoms than you would under one alone. That's more permissive than either licence, and therefore closer to public domain - so _personally_ I'm happy. (I've said this on the lists at some point though I can't instantly find where.) But never mind what I think, is it right for the project? It's always hard to put yourself in someone else's mindset. But if you believe that share-alike is good, then surely you want that share-alike to be enforceable (otherwise you'd support CC0+community norms, a la Science Commons). With CC-BY-SA it's entirely possible that in many jurisdictions it isn't enforceable for all data - and, particularly, for OSM's most commercially valuable asset (routable street networks and addressing) in jurisdictions such as the States. So I wouldn't advocate CC-BY-SA or ODbL for the project; I think ODbL is a better way of providing share-alike. But personally, I'd not be upset if we ended up with dual-licensing, because it's slightly closer to public domain. cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/OSM-legal-talk-A-case-for-CT-CC-BY-SA-tp6613895p6618510.html Sent from the Legal Talk mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA
Cool, thanks for responding Ed. Look forward to the results. Steve On 7/25/2011 3:17 PM, Ed Avis wrote: Steve Coaststeve@... writes: Therefore I think it's going to require you to release the full instructions too. I'm guessing it's an email thread? For the UK, yes. For the US I have done the consultation with the two attorneys in a couple of long phone calls which I did not record. However, I expect the work they produce for me to give the question as well as an answer. I made clear that I want their best-researched opinion and not to promote any particular viewpoint (I am sure this does not need stating but I did so anyway to be on the safe side). In general I do not think a lawyer is able to produce 'biased' answers in the usual sense. There is far too much hot water he or she could get into for not giving a fair shake to all sides of the argument, and this is ingrained into the way lawyers think. But still the way you ask the question can affect the result because of this very caution. We have produced a free map. Can we distribute it under CC-BY-SA and know that some big evil company won't take it and not give back? I am a big evil map company. Can I take this CC-BY-SA data and not give back? These questions appear to be opposites, but the answers may well be 'no and no'. So I have tried not to phrase the question in either of those ways but to ask in a more general way about scope of copyright. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA
Tobias Knerr osm@... writes: * Inadequate protection * CC-BY-SA might not work for data. OSM data is not currently abused in a manner that threatens the project, and that might never even happen. Nevertheless, it seems wise to make sure that we can either prevent this or at least react when it happens. It is true that, by continuing to offer the database under CC-BY-SA, we would no longer /preemptively/ address this potential issue. I have commissioned a law firm in the UK, and one in the US, to investigate the extent to which this may be the case. I have asked them to look at whether the OSM map data falls under copyright, and additionally whether the contract- law provisions in the ODbL add anything to enforceability. The objective is to get analysis which can be shared with the whole community, rather than privileged legal advice which must remain confidential. This includes disclosing how the law firm was chosen and the questions asked. Making contributors agree to the CT gives us the ability to react *if* legal weaknesses of the CC-BY-SA are actually abused at some future point, though, and I believe that this is sufficient. Personally I agree with this (as with everything else you wrote) but some prefer a more aggressive approach. -- Ed Avis e...@waniassset.com ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA
Yes, super interesting. Can we see the instructions and know the names of the firms (basically, are they an IP specific firm or big enough to have an IP speciality?) We could also run a donation drive to cover the costs if that would help? Steve On Jul 24, 2011, at 11:00 AM, M∡rtin Koppenhoefer wrote: 2011/7/24 Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com: I have commissioned a law firm in the UK, and one in the US, to investigate the extent to which this may be the case. I have asked them to look at whether the OSM map data falls under copyright, and additionally whether the contract- law provisions in the ODbL add anything to enforceability. The objective is to get analysis which can be shared with the whole community, rather than privileged legal advice which must remain confidential. This includes disclosing how the law firm was chosen and the questions asked. Ed, this is really interesting news. When do you expect the results? cheers, Martin ___ 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] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA
Richard Fairhurst wrote: Most of what you've said reads, to me, like an argument for licensing OSM under a non-sharealike licence - either true public domain or attribution-only. True. Similar arguments, taken to a more fundamental level, can be used to argue for more liberal licenses. However, the CT happen to already contain a statement that lets the OSMF publish the database under CC-BY-SA. CC-BY-SA is also a license that few current mappers should hate so much that they cannot stand to be part of a project that uses it. This means that CT + CC-BY-SA is quite cheap in terms of both effort and controversy. And it would eliminate the worst legal barriers our users would face with CT + ODbL-only. So couldn't we please add CC-BY-SA to the list of future OSM licenses first and _then_ start the debate whether or not CC-BY/PD/... would be an even better choice? I fear that a debate like that wouldn't go anywhere right now and I would hate to be stuck with ODbL at that point. Inadequate protection? Of course, PD or attribution-only offers none of this so-called protection. But if you're saying you're happy to stick with a licence whose provisions are generally believed to be of uncertain applicability to data[2], it seems to me much more _honest_ to offer the data on equal terms to all-comers, rather than the current situation where good guys abide by the letter of the licence and bad guys don't. Currently, we offer reasonable terms to good guys. Bad guys might be able to squeeze out a bit more in some jurisdictions if they can live with bad press and severed community ties. That doesn't happen a lot, though - as far as I can tell - and the possibility just doesn't bother me enough to let me prefer a solution like ODbL-only that makes life harder for the good guys, too. -- Tobias Knerr ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA
Tordanik wrote: Currently, we offer reasonable terms to good guys. Bad guys might be able to squeeze out a bit more in some jurisdictions if they can live with bad press and severed community ties. That doesn't happen a lot, though - as far as I can tell - and the possibility just doesn't bother me enough to let me prefer a solution like ODbL-only that makes life harder for the good guys, too. I couldn't disagree more. I see plenty of bad guys taking advantage of OSM. I've catalogued elsewhere how OSM is being used without attribution, without share-alike, all the time. I only have to walk down to our village station to see an example of an OSM map being used improperly. They don't even realise there _is_ a community to sever ties with. I'm a good guy, I'd hope; I've given years of my life to OSM, and contributed a lot to the community (hardcore JOSM users may see fit to disagree ;) ). Despite that OSM offers nothing to me, because CC-BY-SA's share-alike clause is defined in relation to creative works, not to data. That means my particular niche (hand-drawn, highly specialised cartography, requiring days of work for a small set of maps) works fine with Ordnance Survey OpenData, but not with OSM. If I were someone writing routing software, whose endeavour is not caught within the arbitrary application of CC-BY-SA share-alike to OSM, I'm sure I'd feel differently. You said CC-BY-SA is also a license that few current mappers should hate so much that they cannot stand to be part of a project that uses it. For the past three years I've stayed here partly in the hope that we'll move to ODbL, and partly out of inertia because OS OpenData wasn't available three years ago. The day that it's decided that we're staying with CC-BY-SA is the day I quit the project. cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/OSM-legal-talk-A-case-for-CT-CC-BY-SA-tp6613895p6616678.html Sent from the Legal Talk mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
[OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA
I apologize in advance for distracting everyone's attention from mapping and other pleasures with a long mail about licenses. However, I have begun to seriously doubt the decision to choose ODbL as the one future OSM license, and believe we should have another look at the license that will ultimately be used for the database published by OSMF. In a nutshell: The Contributor Terms give the OSMF the right to publish OSM data under the terms of the CC-BY-SA. I suggest that the OSMF should use that right, and *continue to publish the OSM database under CC-BY-SA* after the end of the license change process. So do I suggest to stop the license change process? No, I don't. The Contributor Terms will solve many problems on their own, so my suggestion is what could be labelled CT + CC-BY-SA. Do I suggest to abandon ODbL? No. Though I do not like ODbL very much, I do not oppose making the OSM database available under that license. If there are people who want to use OSM under ODbL terms - and I expect there will be some - we can allow them to do so by dual licensing our database. But what I'm asking for is that we continue to offer fresh OSM data under the most attractive license for many honest and productive users of our data: CC-BY-SA. Now for the details. In my opinion, CC-BY-SA has very desirable features: * It is easy to comply with. * It is popular and trusted. Below, I will explain why - so if something doesn't seem instantly obvious to you, read on. In addition, I will address the following topics commonly discussed in the context of our license change: * Collective attribution * Compatibility with other licenses * Future-Proofness * Uncertainty and doubt * Inadequate protection * CC-BY-SA is easy to comply with. * This is what I consider the most compelling benefit. After all, if it's easy to work with OSM, then people will create cool stuff (products, produced works). With CC-BY-SA, you add a license note and attribution to your product and you are done. All other effects are purely legal (letting people copy and modify your work), and do not require any effort on your part. ODbL expects you to do the same, but adds another, far more onerous requirement: publishing derivative databases used in the creation of your products. It is hard to understand what these are, and it is often a challenge to distinguish them from produced works. Publishing the derivative databases can be a significant burden when compared with creation and distribution of the product itself. That's not a new discovery, by the way, and that's why the license attempts to solve the issue by letting you instead describe the process of reproducing the derivative database. Unfortunately, that option is not clearly defined, might not be possible with proprietary software, and can again be a significant burden for any producer using OSM data. * CC-BY-SA is popular and trusted. * The Creative Commons brand is well-known. ODbL and OKF are not. CC's popularity is for a large part due to its presence in art and popular culture, which is something that a pure database license will never fully achieve. The openness instantly associated with the CC licenses by many is an important differentiator for OSM when it is compared with closed competitors like Google Map Maker. People won't compare two walls of legal text. But if they learn that OSM uses CC, they know we're the good guys. * Collective attribution * We want to make sure that users of the data do not need to list all individual contributors. Luckily, contributors now make data available to the OSMF under terms that don't usually require attribution, and the OSMF re-publishes it under an license requiring attribution. Therefore, collective attribution should be safe with a CT + CC-BY-SA solution. * Future-Proofness * We want to be able to change the license in the future if the geodata environment changes drastically. This is not related to ODbL, but a feature of the CT. * Uncertainty and Doubt * Another reason frequently suggested for the switch to CT + ODbL is making it easier for users of the data to know what they need to do in order to conform to the license requirements. The first aspect is who do you ask if you aren't sure? It has been suggested that introducing the Contributor Terms makes it easier to get a useful response because you no longer need to ask thousands of individuals for their interpretations of the license, but this seems to be a property of the CT, not of the ODbL. As far as the licenses themselves are concerned, I observe that CC-BY-SA seems to be /easier/ for people to interpret. Among the reasons for this might again be the popularity of the licenses: CC-BY-SA images are used by thousands of newspapers and websites, so I can just follow their example when using OSM maps in a similar manner and will likely not get it completely wrong. But it goes beyond that. The complexity of the ODbL itself makes it hard to define what you need to do to comply,
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA
Tobias, thank you for writing this. It seems you are speaking from the hearts of many people. thanks, mike On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 6:11 PM, Tobias Knerr o...@tobias-knerr.de wrote: I apologize in advance for distracting everyone's attention from mapping and other pleasures with a long mail about licenses. However, I have begun to seriously doubt the decision to choose ODbL as the one future OSM license, and believe we should have another look at the license that will ultimately be used for the database published by OSMF. In a nutshell: The Contributor Terms give the OSMF the right to publish OSM data under the terms of the CC-BY-SA. I suggest that the OSMF should use that right, and *continue to publish the OSM database under CC-BY-SA* after the end of the license change process. So do I suggest to stop the license change process? No, I don't. The Contributor Terms will solve many problems on their own, so my suggestion is what could be labelled CT + CC-BY-SA. Do I suggest to abandon ODbL? No. Though I do not like ODbL very much, I do not oppose making the OSM database available under that license. If there are people who want to use OSM under ODbL terms - and I expect there will be some - we can allow them to do so by dual licensing our database. But what I'm asking for is that we continue to offer fresh OSM data under the most attractive license for many honest and productive users of our data: CC-BY-SA. Now for the details. In my opinion, CC-BY-SA has very desirable features: * It is easy to comply with. * It is popular and trusted. Below, I will explain why - so if something doesn't seem instantly obvious to you, read on. In addition, I will address the following topics commonly discussed in the context of our license change: * Collective attribution * Compatibility with other licenses * Future-Proofness * Uncertainty and doubt * Inadequate protection * CC-BY-SA is easy to comply with. * This is what I consider the most compelling benefit. After all, if it's easy to work with OSM, then people will create cool stuff (products, produced works). With CC-BY-SA, you add a license note and attribution to your product and you are done. All other effects are purely legal (letting people copy and modify your work), and do not require any effort on your part. ODbL expects you to do the same, but adds another, far more onerous requirement: publishing derivative databases used in the creation of your products. It is hard to understand what these are, and it is often a challenge to distinguish them from produced works. Publishing the derivative databases can be a significant burden when compared with creation and distribution of the product itself. That's not a new discovery, by the way, and that's why the license attempts to solve the issue by letting you instead describe the process of reproducing the derivative database. Unfortunately, that option is not clearly defined, might not be possible with proprietary software, and can again be a significant burden for any producer using OSM data. * CC-BY-SA is popular and trusted. * The Creative Commons brand is well-known. ODbL and OKF are not. CC's popularity is for a large part due to its presence in art and popular culture, which is something that a pure database license will never fully achieve. The openness instantly associated with the CC licenses by many is an important differentiator for OSM when it is compared with closed competitors like Google Map Maker. People won't compare two walls of legal text. But if they learn that OSM uses CC, they know we're the good guys. * Collective attribution * We want to make sure that users of the data do not need to list all individual contributors. Luckily, contributors now make data available to the OSMF under terms that don't usually require attribution, and the OSMF re-publishes it under an license requiring attribution. Therefore, collective attribution should be safe with a CT + CC-BY-SA solution. * Future-Proofness * We want to be able to change the license in the future if the geodata environment changes drastically. This is not related to ODbL, but a feature of the CT. * Uncertainty and Doubt * Another reason frequently suggested for the switch to CT + ODbL is making it easier for users of the data to know what they need to do in order to conform to the license requirements. The first aspect is who do you ask if you aren't sure? It has been suggested that introducing the Contributor Terms makes it easier to get a useful response because you no longer need to ask thousands of individuals for their interpretations of the license, but this seems to be a property of the CT, not of the ODbL. As far as the licenses themselves are concerned, I observe that CC-BY-SA seems to be /easier/ for people to interpret. Among the reasons for this might again be the popularity of the licenses: CC-BY-SA images are used by
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA
On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 5:11 PM, Tobias Knerr o...@tobias-knerr.de wrote: I apologize in advance for distracting everyone's attention from mapping and other pleasures with a long mail about licenses. However, I have begun to seriously doubt the decision to choose ODbL as the one future OSM license, and believe we should have another look at the license that will ultimately be used for the database published by OSMF. In a nutshell: The Contributor Terms give the OSMF the right to publish OSM data under the terms of the CC-BY-SA. I suggest that the OSMF should use that right, and *continue to publish the OSM database under CC-BY-SA* after the end of the license change process. So do I suggest to stop the license change process? No, I don't. The Contributor Terms will solve many problems on their own, so my suggestion is what could be labelled CT + CC-BY-SA. Do I suggest to abandon ODbL? No. Though I do not like ODbL very much, I do not oppose making the OSM database available under that license. If there are people who want to use OSM under ODbL terms - and I expect there will be some - we can allow them to do so by dual licensing our database. But what I'm asking for is that we continue to offer fresh OSM data under the most attractive license for many honest and productive users of our data: CC-BY-SA. Now for the details. In my opinion, CC-BY-SA has very desirable features: * It is easy to comply with. * It is popular and trusted. Below, I will explain why - so if something doesn't seem instantly obvious to you, read on. In addition, I will address the following topics commonly discussed in the context of our license change: * Collective attribution * Compatibility with other licenses * Future-Proofness * Uncertainty and doubt * Inadequate protection * CC-BY-SA is easy to comply with. * This is what I consider the most compelling benefit. After all, if it's easy to work with OSM, then people will create cool stuff (products, produced works). With CC-BY-SA, you add a license note and attribution to your product and you are done. All other effects are purely legal (letting people copy and modify your work), and do not require any effort on your part. ODbL expects you to do the same, but adds another, far more onerous requirement: publishing derivative databases used in the creation of your products. It is hard to understand what these are, and it is often a challenge to distinguish them from produced works. Publishing the derivative databases can be a significant burden when compared with creation and distribution of the product itself. That's not a new discovery, by the way, and that's why the license attempts to solve the issue by letting you instead describe the process of reproducing the derivative database. Unfortunately, that option is not clearly defined, might not be possible with proprietary software, and can again be a significant burden for any producer using OSM data. * CC-BY-SA is popular and trusted. * The Creative Commons brand is well-known. ODbL and OKF are not. CC's popularity is for a large part due to its presence in art and popular culture, which is something that a pure database license will never fully achieve. The openness instantly associated with the CC licenses by many is an important differentiator for OSM when it is compared with closed competitors like Google Map Maker. People won't compare two walls of legal text. But if they learn that OSM uses CC, they know we're the good guys. * Collective attribution * We want to make sure that users of the data do not need to list all individual contributors. Luckily, contributors now make data available to the OSMF under terms that don't usually require attribution, and the OSMF re-publishes it under an license requiring attribution. Therefore, collective attribution should be safe with a CT + CC-BY-SA solution. * Future-Proofness * We want to be able to change the license in the future if the geodata environment changes drastically. This is not related to ODbL, but a feature of the CT. * Uncertainty and Doubt * Another reason frequently suggested for the switch to CT + ODbL is making it easier for users of the data to know what they need to do in order to conform to the license requirements. The first aspect is who do you ask if you aren't sure? It has been suggested that introducing the Contributor Terms makes it easier to get a useful response because you no longer need to ask thousands of individuals for their interpretations of the license, but this seems to be a property of the CT, not of the ODbL. As far as the licenses themselves are concerned, I observe that CC-BY-SA seems to be /easier/ for people to interpret. Among the reasons for this might again be the popularity of the licenses: CC-BY-SA images are used by thousands of newspapers and websites, so I can just follow their example when using OSM maps in a similar manner
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA
On 24 July 2011 02:11, Tobias Knerr o...@tobias-knerr.de wrote: So do I suggest to stop the license change process? No, I don't. The Contributor Terms will solve many problems on their own, so my suggestion is what could be labelled CT + CC-BY-SA. This will cause similar/same problems as CT+ODBL, which stops the benefits from sharing a like and being able to take changes that others have made and include them unless they agree to the CT, already you see this with people saying their changes are public domain so the data isn't wasted, but absolutely will never agree to the CTs. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
