[OSM-legal-talk] Major update to the Open Database License wiki page
I have reworked the main Open Database Licence page (and renamed it) so that it provides an useful introduction to the whole license background and the current position to a first time reader. I have bumped the detailed content from the existing page to a new page. Check out the page here and please make it better! http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Database_License I do suggest that people who are interested in this debate use the wiki 'watch' feature to monitor changes to all of the relevant wiki pages, which should all be in the Open Data Licence category. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:Open_Data_Licence Regards, Peter ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A Creative Commons iCommons license
On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 10:26 AM, Richard Fairhurst rich...@systemed.netwrote: CC-BY-SA says: You may distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform a Derivative Work only under the terms of this License, a later version of this License with the same License Elements as this License, or a Creative Commons iCommons license that contains the same License Elements as this License (e.g. Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Japan). slightly provocative Could we ask CC to declare that the new fabulous ODbL, after due revision and comments by the community, can be considered a Creative Commons iCommons licence for the purposes of the above - in much the same way as FSF permitted migration from GFDL to CC-BY-SA? /slightly provocative It's my understanding that the ODbL is very different from a CC-BY-SA license, so I think this would be a very unlikely thing to happen. More importantly the Factual Information License, which is what contributors will actually be signing up to, is totally unlike CC-BY-SA in every respect. 80n cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/%22A-Creative-Commons-iCommons-license%22-tp22260709p22260709.html Sent from the OpenStreetMap - Legal Talk mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A Creative Commons iCommons license
80n wrote: It's my understanding that the ODbL is very different from a CC-BY-SA license, so I think this would be a very unlikely thing to happen. It's a share-alike licence with some attribution provision - I'd say that, in fact, the two licences have pretty much the same intent. It's just that one works for data and the other doesn't. Two incompatible licences with the same intent is broadly why FSF agreed to facilitate Wikipedia's migration to CC-BY-SA, too. More importantly the Factual Information License, which is what contributors will actually be signing up to, is totally unlike CC-BY-SA in every respect. Right - so is the proposal that contributors actually sign up to FIL? There's been some uncertainty over that in the past. cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/%22A-Creative-Commons-iCommons-license%22-tp22260709p22260883.html Sent from the OpenStreetMap - Legal Talk mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A Creative Commons iCommons license
On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 10:50 AM, Richard Fairhurst rich...@systemed.netwrote: 80n wrote: It's my understanding that the ODbL is very different from a CC-BY-SA license, so I think this would be a very unlikely thing to happen. It's a share-alike licence with some attribution provision - I'd say that, in fact, the two licences have pretty much the same intent. It's just that one works for data and the other doesn't. It does have a share alike clause but it is different from the CC one. As it gives the user fewer rights it's hard to see how it would be compatible. It does have an attribution clause but it is different from the CC one. The attribution is not to the original author. Again fewer rights for the contributor. Two incompatible licences with the same intent is broadly why FSF agreed to facilitate Wikipedia's migration to CC-BY-SA, too. More importantly the Factual Information License, which is what contributors will actually be signing up to, is totally unlike CC-BY-SA in every respect. Right - so is the proposal that contributors actually sign up to FIL? There's been some uncertainty over that in the past. Database rights only exist for collections. A single person's contribution may not, on its own, be a database. The only proposal I've seen, and it appears to be a bit of an afterthought, is that contributors assign away *all* their rights by agreeing to FIL. I wonder if we are all discussing the wrong license? The FIL seems to be a much more important consideration for contributors than the ODbL. 80n cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/%22A-Creative-Commons-iCommons-license%22-tp22260709p22260883.html Sent from the OpenStreetMap - Legal Talk mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A Creative Commons iCommons license
80n wrote: It does have a share alike clause but it is different from the CC one. As it gives the user fewer rights it's hard to see how it would be compatible. In the analogue case, GFDL's share-alike is different from CC-BY-SA's, yet the relicensing happened. The point is that compatible can actually be decided by CC themselves. This thing about ODbL giving the user fewer rights is an absolute canard (quack). ODbL is not weaker copyleft than CC-BY-SA, it's simply expressed in a way that is relevant to data. It provides the user with protection in jurisdictions where copyright may not apply to data: CC-BY-SA doesn't. It requires the producer of a derivative to publish the source: CC-BY-SA doesn't. Against this, ODbL clearly defines where the boundaries of sharealike lie in relation to data. In some particular cases this could be viewed as fewer rights. I actually don't see it that way. CC-BY-SA's application to data is so unclear that the user effectively abrogates their rights in favour of the guys with the best lawyers, who can pay to have it interpreted their way. That isn't, by any stretch, more rights than ODbL - unless you're Google. It does have an attribution clause but it is different from the CC one. The attribution is not to the original author. Again fewer rights for the contributor. Again, that's not true. ODbL simply says in 4.2c that you must c. Keep intact any copyright or Database Right notices and notices that refer to this Licence. That provides attribution to the copyright/db right holder, i.e. the original author. [...] Database rights only exist for collections. A single person's contribution may not, on its own, be a database. That's definitely not true. A single person's contribution may certainly be a database. The EU database right legislation makes no requirement for multiple authorship and neither does ODbL. The only proposal I've seen, and it appears to be a bit of an afterthought, is that contributors assign away *all* their rights by agreeing to FIL. I wonder if we are all discussing the wrong license? The FIL seems to be a much more important consideration for contributors than the ODbL. I definitely agree (yay) that the ODbL/FIL relationship needs much more discussion than it's had to date. I believe Jordan's original intent (but he can say this much better than me, and contradict me if necessary) was that users' contributions could individually be licensed under ODbL. Your contributions would be ODbL. My contributions would be ODbL. OSM would aggregate them into one big ODbL database. The multiple-attribution question is answered either by a location (such as a relevant directory) where a user would be likely to look for it (4.2d) being www.openstreetmap.org - or by users agreeing, as a condition of contributing to OSM, that they choose not to place any copyright or database right _notices_ on their contribution other than a reference to ODbL. cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/%22A-Creative-Commons-iCommons-license%22-tp22260709p22261200.html Sent from the OpenStreetMap - Legal Talk mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A Creative Commons iCommons license
On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 11:34 AM, Richard Fairhurst rich...@systemed.netwrote: 80n wrote: It does have a share alike clause but it is different from the CC one. As it gives the user fewer rights it's hard to see how it would be compatible. In the analogue case, GFDL's share-alike is different from CC-BY-SA's, yet the relicensing happened. The point is that compatible can actually be decided by CC themselves. This thing about ODbL giving the user fewer rights is an absolute canard (quack). ODbL is not weaker copyleft than CC-BY-SA, it's simply expressed in a way that is relevant to data. It provides the user with protection in jurisdictions where copyright may not apply to data: CC-BY-SA doesn't. It requires the producer of a derivative to publish the source: CC-BY-SA doesn't. I agree that ODbL does provide some additional rights, but it also removes some rights and those are the ones that are are important to consider in the context of an automatic relicensing. Against this, ODbL clearly defines where the boundaries of sharealike lie in relation to data. In some particular cases this could be viewed as fewer rights. Indeed it is exactly this case I had in mind, where the license gives the contributor fewer rights. It creates a class of derivative works, called Produced Works, that are not share alike. I actually don't see it that way. CC-BY-SA's application to data is so unclear that the user effectively abrogates their rights in favour of the guys with the best lawyers, who can pay to have it interpreted their way. That isn't, by any stretch, more rights than ODbL - unless you're Google. It does have an attribution clause but it is different from the CC one. The attribution is not to the original author. Again fewer rights for the contributor. Again, that's not true. ODbL simply says in 4.2c that you must c. Keep intact any copyright or Database Right notices and notices that refer to this Licence. That provides attribution to the copyright/db right holder, i.e. the original author. The attribution is to the owner of the database, not the author of the work. There is no requirement in ODbL to provide attribution to the authors of the database's content. Indeed the ODbL asserts that it provides no protection over any of the content, just on the database as a collective whole. It makes the provision for the database content to be protected by some other mechanism, such as copyright, but we see that the proposed FIL license doesn't provide that protection. [...] Database rights only exist for collections. A single person's contribution may not, on its own, be a database. That's definitely not true. A single person's contribution may certainly be a database. The EU database right legislation makes no requirement for multiple authorship and neither does ODbL. Let me clarify. The database right applies to a collection of facts. An individual contribution may not qualify as a database if it is not a significant collection of facts, not because it is just one person. Most individual contributions will be insufficient *on their own* to constitute a database. If someone were to spend a few weeks mapping a town and then contribute that town in one shot then that may be a database and so could be submitted to OSM under an ODbL license. But I don't think we want to encourage that kind of behaviour. The average contribution, a single editing session with JOSM or Potlatch, would not constitute a database. The only proposal I've seen, and it appears to be a bit of an afterthought, is that contributors assign away *all* their rights by agreeing to FIL. I wonder if we are all discussing the wrong license? The FIL seems to be a much more important consideration for contributors than the ODbL. I definitely agree (yay) that the ODbL/FIL relationship needs much more discussion than it's had to date. I believe Jordan's original intent (but he can say this much better than me, and contradict me if necessary) was that users' contributions could individually be licensed under ODbL. If that were the case then the FIL license would not be necessary. Your contributions would be ODbL. My contributions would be ODbL. OSM would aggregate them into one big ODbL database. The multiple-attribution question is answered either by a location (such as a relevant directory) where a user would be likely to look for it (4.2d) being www.openstreetmap.org - or by users agreeing, as a condition of contributing to OSM, that they choose not to place any copyright or database right _notices_ on their contribution other than a reference to ODbL. Attribution to individuals is really really important to many contributors. They give their time and effort, attribution is the *only* reward for these people. They want to be able to say I did that. cheers Richard -- View this message in context:
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Updates to ODbL related Wiki pages and outstanding issues
Legal review of Use Case doco with original Use Case text is now available at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Use_Cases or go straight to http://foundation.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/2008-02-28_legalreviewofosmlicenseusecases2.pdf http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Timeline can be deleted and the link redirected to http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Implementation_Plan, I see nothing that is not dated or duplicated. Sorry, I am not sure how to do this. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Open_Issues versus Implementation_Issues. Some of are very general questions more related to the license itself than our implementation. I've added some comments that may help generate specific action items. Mike At 11:55 PM 27/02/2009, Peter Miller wrote: I have been through the wiki pages that relate to the ODbL and updated them where I can. I have updated the name of the license to OdBL on all pages (I think). I have updated the links to the license itself to point to OpenDataCommons not OpenContentLawyer in all cases (I think). I have also done some more work on the Use Cases page to make the discussion points clearer. I have moved the legal council comments to be directly below the Use Case is all cases and in some cases have responded to questions. I have also moved the Wikimapia Use Case to the negative Use Case list from the positive list. There is another Use Case in the negative list relating to WIkipedia which I think belongs in the Positive Use Case list but am waiting for any comments on that one before moving it. Here are the list of pages I believe are be relevant to the ODbL license going forward. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:Open_Data_Licence Work that still needs to be done... I don't have the knowledge to update the Time Line page (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Timeline ). I encourage someone within the licensing team to update this page and reconcile it with the new 'Implementation Plan' page (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Implementation_Plan ). In what way are these pages serving different purposes? Should one be deleted and should any relevant content be transferred to the other? A new blank 'Implementation Issues' page as been created (and is referred to from the email announcement. Does this supersede the 'Open Issues' page and should the content be moved to is from that page or is it seen as being for something different? Could someone from the license team clarify. There are a number of important issues on the 'Open Issues' page (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Open_Issues ). I suggest we build on this list in the coming days as required. I have added an open question about 'who's feature is it' for license transfer purposes. Are we to get any comment from the legal council or the licensing team on any of these? Regards, Peter ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
[OSM-legal-talk] compatibility with CC licenses
merging several threads here I am not speaking for CC the organization here - there have been no conversations to my knowledge about doing a compatibility check between ODbL and CC licensing. But, I would remind everyone that the current official CC policy on CC licenses and databases - indeed, on any legal tools other than PD for databases - is the science commons protocol on open access to data, which calls for the PD position only. This position comes from a goal of promoting interoperability across domains of data. We started out endorsing the use of CC licenses on the copyrightable elements of databases but not the data itself. After about three years of research we decided that was a really Bad Thing if what we wanted was data integration. The experience with GFDL and CC is instructive - even when freedoms are similar, license compatibility is hard. We are trying to promote a web of integrated data, where one can take gobs of clinical trial data and gobs of geospatial data and mash them together, and if each group has share alike licensing with slightly different wording, then interoperability fails. Not to mention what happens when you have to deal with things like patient privacy from open medical data mixing into the share alike requirements from non-medical data. We found that each community has its own norms and desires, and that embedding those norms into licenses was very likely to result in non-compatible legal code. Please see http://sciencecommons.org/projects/publishing/open-access-data-protocol/ for the formal position on these things. jtw ps - Jordan's PDDL was the first legal tool to comply with the protocol, and we're looking hard at creating some formal norms language and tools. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A Creative Commons iCommons license
80n, Indeed it is exactly this case I had in mind, where the license gives the contributor fewer rights. It creates a class of derivative works, called Produced Works, that are not share alike. In my opinion, OSM's value is almost entirely in its being a database. If OSM were not a database, then any meaningful use of OSM I could think of would first require converting it into one! A license that protects this core capacity and makes sure that OSM data, when published/used/whatever as a database, remains free, does IMHO indeed capture the essential bit without wasting energy on the fringes. You are right in saying that a Produced Work under ODbL does not carry the same restrictions as many believe it now has under CC-BY-SA, but I fail to see the use of implementing such restrictions. In my eyes, there is nothing worth protecting in a Produced Work when our data has lost its essential capability of being accessed as a database. And the essential capability of database-ness is protected, as Richard pointed out, even if the data should be conveyed by means of a Produced Work. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A Creative Commons iCommons license
Hi Richard Fairhurst wrote: FWIW, I do think that the ODbL Produced Work provisions _may_ need rewording. There seems to be a myth around here that a Produced Work can be public domain. Clearly it can't - not in the traditional sense of PD - because of 4.7 (the Reverse Engineering provision that dictates that the data is still copyleft). If there is any restriction on a work, it isn't PD. I always thought that the reverse engineering provision would apply automatically through the database directive, so even if we allowed a Produced Work to be PD then reassembling them into a database would still make that database protected, but this was perhaps seen too much through European eyes. Sadly, this makes it impossible to create a derived product from OSM-old and OSM-new because it could not be CC-BY-SA with that added restriction. So my before-after slippy map would have to be layered application. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A Creative Commons iCommons license
Very roughly (I'm generalising here), in both cases, Derivatives refer = to a situation where the entire result is copyleft, Collectives refer to something where only part of it is.=20 A collective work includes the untransformed work. A derivative work adapts it in some way. One can claim copyright on either (IIRC), but as a pragmatic move alternative licences tend to ignore collective works. Produced Works are a subclass of the latter, not a new class at all. The data component is still copyleft, a= nd a stronger copyleft than CC-BY-SA gives, but other independently sourced components may not be. Is this to handle the way people wish layers to work? - Rob. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A Creative Commons iCommons license
Hi, Gustav Foseid wrote: The database directive does not stop you from making a geographic database, rendering it as a map and then releasing it under something like CC0. I am a bit unsure what kind of restriction the database directive could possibly have placed on that map. Not on the map per se, but if you use the map to re-create the original database then - at least that's what I was thinking! - you are not using your own database but you are (again) using the database compiled by the original owner, so you need his permission to use it. This is - I thought - absolutely independent of the channel through which you received the original database. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] compatibility with CC licenses
On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 12:42:57PM -0500, John Wilbanks wrote: I am not speaking for CC the organization here - there have been no conversations to my knowledge about doing a compatibility check between ODbL and CC licensing. But, I would remind everyone that the current official CC policy on CC licenses and databases - indeed, on any legal tools other than PD for databases - is the science commons protocol on open access to data, which calls for the PD position only. This position comes from a goal of promoting interoperability across domains of data. We started out endorsing the use of CC licenses on the copyrightable elements of databases but not the data itself. After about three years of research we decided that was a really Bad Thing if what we wanted was data integration. Interoperability of data would be nice, but as far as I am concerned it’s not a primary aim unless the interoperability is with other similarly free (freedom) and licensed such that further redistribution is also free. Simon -- A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.—John Gall signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Lawyer responses to use cases, major problems
On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 10:58:04PM +0100, Frederik Ramm wrote: Having to grant access to pgsql data base --- In this use case we look at someone who does nothing more than taking OSM data and rearranging it according to fixed rules, e.g. by running it through osm2pgsql. The question we face is: Does this create a derived database to which access has to be granted because of the share-alike element of the license, or is it sufficient to say this is just the planet file run through osm2pgsql? The lawyer's answer is: Need clarification here. From my reading, this example would seem to constitute a Derivative Database under the ODbL. It’s a database, derived from the original. To me it’s a derived database. It does need clarifying to say just that. this could mean that anyone running osm2pgsql importing minutely data updates would possibly have to make available a ''psql dump of the whole planet'' for any snapshot time where someone cares to request it. So be it. The problem with the old license, the problem we're trying to solve mainly, is that there were so many unresolved issues, that a strict reading of the license could bring down most services overnight and everyone depended on a relaxed reading. If things like the above are not made very very clear and leave any room for interpretation then the new license, again, has the potential to wreck many legitimate uses when read strictly. ODbL already defines derivatives, produced works and collective databases separately, and is much more permissive for the latter two. Distribute a derived database, share it please. Simon -- A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.—John Gall signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Lawyer responses to use cases, major problems
Simon Ward si...@... writes: The lawyer's answer is: Need clarification here. From my reading, this example would seem to constitute a Derivative Database under the ODbL. It’s a database, derived from the original. To me it’s a derived database. It does need clarifying to say just that. this could mean that anyone running osm2pgsql importing minutely data updates would possibly have to make available a ''psql dump of the whole planet'' for any snapshot time where someone cares to request it. So be it. I agree that logically this is OK. It is a database, derived from the original. I feel still that it is unreasonable to say that this kind of just imported and hardly any modified dataset really is markable different from the original. I do regularly import some osm data into PostGIS and reproject it inside the database. Would it be enough to tell where to download the original OSM data and what script to run, or should I really make a dump from my imported and reprojected database tables if someone requests? The result would be identical. Where actually goes the limit between database and something else? I believe that if I convert the data from osm format directly into ESRI Shapefiles then I do not have a database, or do I? But if I let ArcGIS to store the shapefile data into its own personal geodatabase, then I would have a derived database again? How about if I store some attributes from osm data into Excel vs. Access, the latter forms obviously a derived database while the first doesn't? ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
