At 01:58 AM 6/12/2009, John Smith wrote: >2009/12/6 Shaun McDonald <sh...@shaunmcdonald.me.uk>: >> The License Working Group has spent months, well probably nearer years, on >> the license change. They know one heck of a lot more about legal systems >> than myself. They are people that I trust. Therefore I'm going to listen to >> them, and let them just get on with it. I really just wan this license >> change sorted out and completed as there are other more important things to >> be done. > >How many of them are practising copyright lawyers?
None. Which is why we elected to work with Open Data Commons. The ODbL 1.0 license itself is theirs, not ours. Our relationship with them has worked very well. We have provided our special, but often generalisable, requirements for geodata and they have provided the big picture and, of course, specific legal discipline. Their general jurisdictional background is UK and Europe: http://www.opendatacommons.org/about/advisory-council/ . The OSMF also directly engaged legal counsel specifically for OpenStreetMap; Clark Asay of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, http://www.wsgr.com . They generously provided hours pro bono and we burned through quite a few. Clark has been both enthusiastic and diligent. We asked him to review both ODbL and give input to our Contributor Terms as well as presented many specific concerns raised by us and the OpenStreetMap community. Based in Silicon Valley also gave us the advantage of a US jurisdictional perspective and in the heart of technical intellectual property land. Hope that helps, Mike Collinson OSMF License Working Group _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
