-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Gervase Markham wrote: | Robert (Jamie) Munro wrote: |> Long term, we can avoid the ambiguity by making it clear that all data |> belongs to OSM, whoever that is (probably the foundation), then we can |> let the foundation change the license whenever they need to. | | This would be a copyright assignment, which would be a large change in | the relationship between the participants and the project. As far as I | understand it, it hasn't even been proposed.
It's been proposed by me several times in the past. I think it's essential. I don't know of a similar major project that doesn't do some kind of assignment. Wikipedia is the nearest, but Wikipedia is a collection of articles that all stand on their own. We need a situation where someone can say "Yes" when an enquiry comes in, not "hire a lawyer to look at license XYZ". Otherwise the data is useless for many purposes that everyone would agree it should be allowed for. For example, a while ago, ITN news needed a map of Baghdad. No one could say for sure how much of the TV buletin they would have to release CC-by-sa in order to allow them to do that. Looking back at that now, probably "only" the final ITN styled bitmap image that is shown on the screen, but the designers of ITN's style guidelines probably haven't licensed ITN to release them. If the foundation owned the data, they could say to ITN "just show a logo and www.openstreetmap.org in the corner at some point", and everyone would be happy. Another example: it would be great if an npemap type system could be used with OSM maps to derive a free postcode database, but license incompatibilities make that impossible. This is insane. Obviously if that went to any kind of vote, the foundation would allow that, but they don't currently have the power to allow it. Yes, maybe you can come up with a license that would unambiguously allow the above two uses, but there will be cases where it will be in OSM's interests to bend the rules, and we must provide a mechanism that allows this. Robert (Jamie) Munro -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHqlXaz+aYVHdncI0RAruLAKDFMC5/F21mdMJbU/mc5Q8WdeSygwCfQG3n JRVeGK62lCSlh9J8oSfnPIw= =sIHk -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-talk
