On Mon, Jan 07, 2008 at 09:35:19PM +0100, Frederik Ramm wrote: > PD - > pros - easy to implement, legally trivial, does not require > policing, compatible (on the usage side) with any other data
Ignoring the fact that under US law, it's impossible for individuals to place copyrighted material into the public domain? Ignoring the fact that many countries have no concept of 'public domain'? Using Public Domain data may be easy -- creating it may be hard. > cons - will lead to loss of data by people who do not want to > support PD, and may have compatibility issues on the import > side (e.g. cannot import data that mandates attribution) Which would be all the AND data? All the MassGIS data? A large number of the 'successes' that OSM has claimed have lain precisely in its licensing model, and abandoning those successes seems somewhat silly given the inroads already made: > CC - > pros - no loss of data, copyleft "spirit" remains intact, world > becomes better place, legal requirement to give stuff back to > OSM Er, CC? I didn't see Richard proposing the use of CC... Instead, there was a proposal of using a different community-targeted open data license... Are you sure you read the post? I'm assuming you're aware that you're telling the author of Potlatch -- one of the relatively few pieces of OSM software *released into the Public Domain* (so far as that is legally possible) -- that his/the foundation's attitude towards the data licensing debate is the wrong one? I'm perhaps reading something wrong. I'm clearly not a lawyer, but reading the license stuff that is linked to from Richard's post, it's clear to me that the license that the foundation is asking for feedback on pursuing is *very* different to the CC license, in a way that makes it very clear what types of activities are allowed that wasn't at all clear before. This is not following the status quo: it represents a significant change in the understanding of the use of the data, in what I personally consider a very good step forward. Did you read the Open DB License? Your argument seems to not take into account the level of thought which has been put into the current verison of the license: I'm not sure if that's intentional, or if I'm just misreading your message. If the latter, I apologize, but if it's the former, or if you haven't read the license yet, I'd highly encourage you to be more specific about what things you feel the ODB License does not make clear -- because to my reading, it's pretty obvious. > And I say this again, if I saw that a majority of OSM contributers > thinks that the copyleft aspect is important, then I'd not have this > discussion. It is just that it seems to me that there are very few > people who hold up the CC banner. And most of these, after some > thinking, silently retract their banner when I ask them how they'd > combine OSM data with a GNU FDL source and what the result should be > licensed under... My position that copyleft is not important is only the position I take personally because there have thus far been no good licenses that enforce copyleft without unneccesarily preventing derivative works that are intended to be allowed. In other words, it seems to be that the spirt of OSM has always been in the right place, but the technical terms of the license used by the project has made this either more difficult than it should be or downright impossible to meet. I think these new licenses embody the spirit. WIth that in mind, I must state that my position with regard to Public Domain is not really what I wanted -- it was the 'best possible option' I saw. I see this as a better option, and I think that OSM would do best to pursue something along these lines. Regards, -- Christopher Schmidt Web Developer
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