Hi Talk-au, I am a volunteer member (like all the members) of the Licensing Working Group (LWG), OSM Sysadmin Team along with a few other OpenStreetMap groups.
The LWG is well aware of the NearMap licensing issue and we are trying to get it resolved as soon as we can but we are an all volunteer team with day jobs. The Contributor Terms v1.2.4 reduces the project's freedoms in an attempt to appease NearMap. NearMap Pty Ltd is a company owned by Ipernica. NearMap is an awesome company for allowing us to use their aerial imagery. Unfortunately there are some very vocal (anonymous) members of the Australian community who seem intent on creating a virtual "Us vs Them" conflict in the community with exaggerated claims and mistruths. We are one project and on the same team. I believe we all value the amazing project we have collaboratively built. The licensing debate has unfortunately been going on for many years now. For a laugh, listen to the licensing debate from the OpenStreetMap "State of the Map" 2007 conference: http://www.archive.org/details/Sotm07PanelDebate-LicensingOsmData The Open Database License (ODbL) was created by the Open Data Commons with OpenStreetMap specifically in mind. The License is specifically created to address the peculiarities of globally licensing a libré (open) and gratis (free of cost) database. The license is modelled as closely as practical to the GPL / LGPL software license. The ODbL summary: http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/summary/ , the license introduces some new initially confusing terms like "Produced Work". (Creative Commons created terms like "Share-Alike"). The independent New York Law School paper "Facilitating Collaboration On Geospatial Data Using Social and Legal Norms" explains the rational for the license change much better than I could hope to. http://www.nyls.edu/user_files/1/3/4/30/58/1134/DatabaseLicensing_110207.pdf The much-maligned OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSM-F, OSMF) is a not-for-profit company registered in England & Wales as a legal entity to represent the project. The OSMF is not some nefarious entity out to steal all our precious geodata ZOMG. Humbly, Grant Slater aka Firefishy Not a pommy. _______________________________________________ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
