This isn't about the license, but it's about choosing a license, and why are we re-licensing. Mostly it's about community, which is why it's here and not on le...@. Earlier, I wrote this, from my perspective as the head of licensing at the Open Source Initiative:
-- One of the lessons learned from ten years of management of the Open Source license space is that licenses don't matter; community does. Yes, people get passionate about licenses, but *really* they're being passionate about their community. What is most important to OSM is not the license, but instead the people. The data may just as well be in the public domain. The real question then becomes: can somebody borrow your data and combine it with their data faster than you can create it? My own feeling is that they cannot, so I am in favor of OSM being relicensed into the public domain. However, I have spoken with Steve Coast, founder of the project, and I know that he is dead-set against public domain OSM data. Thus, the second best thing to do, if you're going to threaten to sue infringers, is a license that clearly spells out what portions of the data they can use freely, and what uses are considered infringing. The ODbL does a good job of lining that out, and so I recommend that you relicense to it. -- I've re-thought this, and I think that the proper course of action, which will do the least damage to the community, is to stay with CC-By-SA. First, because all the data in OSM is already licensed under that license. Second, because it will do minimum damage to the community (the discussion here is evidence that the community WILL be badly harmed by relicensing). Third, because if the worst thing that happens is that the CC-By-SA turns out to be unenforcible, then the data will be in the public domain. For the reasons I listed above, that's not a bad thing. Community first, license second. -- --my blog is at http://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk