Re: [OSM-legal-talk] ODbL comments from Creative Commons

2009-03-25 Thread John Wilbanks
 
Steve wrote:

John I would assert that you're more worried about perceived
competition for your licenses
 

JTW says:

If this were the case, we'd have taken in the ODbL, or we'd have written 
something like it. With CC's position in the licensing space it'd have 
been quickly adopted - people have been pressing me to get a database 
license out for five years.

This would be so much easier than arguing for no licenses that I wish 
it were true. Gad, I'd love to have something to recommend rather than 
give it all away and make it really free.

 
Steve wrote:

and that there are people out there who
want to be able to keep attribution and share-alike. I appreciate that
you're trying to stop people opening pandoras box and shoe horn the
cornucopia of people who might want a database license in to the PDDL
before they can figure out there are other options... but ultimately
it's not going to work. Someone else, somewhere will try to do another
ODbL even if you succeed stopping this one and ultimately people will
use it.
 

JTW says:

This is deeply true and well taken. But as I've always tried to note, my 
job is to try and fight for the public domain in the sciences, and the 
existence of these licenses is a threat simply by the opening of the box 
(and Steve - thank you for this comment and appreciation. Seriously).

Thus, I have to try to push the rock up the hill, however Sisyphean the 
task. Just because it's hard doesn't make it pointless. Unlike software, 
there is not a governing set of laws that require us to apply the ideas 
of property to create openness, and unlike software, the ideas of 
property may well hurt our task. Time will tell.

I think OSM is a good community. I believe you've given me a good 
hearing, for which I thank you. And I accept that you've made the 
decision that you want SA. Based on a lengthy back and forth with Rufus 
and Jordan this morning, I'm going to take my high level issues with the 
license back to the okfn-list, and I'll keep lurking here but only to 
watch and answer questions.

 
Steve wrote:

The simplest use case I can think of are all the companies who have
datasets that they're be happy with something like BY-SA but would
never release anything under PDDL. It's not going to fly to just tell
them all that they 'should' release things in to the public domain.
 

This is true, and is fine for them. It just makes that data 
significantly less interoperable.

I believe that many communities will come along and re-open that 
Pandora's Box, encode their own versions of share-alike, and we won't be 
able to put the data together. I hope I'm wrong, and the nice thing is 
that we'll have data in a few years to tell us the outcome.

jtw

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] ODbL comments from Creative Commons

2009-03-25 Thread Andy Robinson (blackadder-lists)
(contract fusion, database fission and
anti-copyright-matter). Inspired :-)

Cheers

Andy

-Original Message-
From: legal-talk-boun...@openstreetmap.org [mailto:legal-talk-
boun...@openstreetmap.org] On Behalf Of Andy Allan
Sent: 25 March 2009 7:09 PM
To: Licensing and other legal discussions.
Subject: Re: [OSM-legal-talk] ODbL comments from Creative Commons

On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 6:37 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote:

 On 25 Mar 2009, at 11:34, Andy Allan wrote:

 On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 5:36 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote:
 On 22 Mar 2009, at 06:08, 80n wrote:
 The complexity arguments are largely superfluous.
 [...]
 I get in my car every day and drive to work without knowing
 how the engine management system works but it's not a 'show stopper'.

 I disagree with you there Steve. The problem is that *we're the guys
 building the engine*, and yet we don't know how the engine management
 system works.

 I agree that the authors and groups who built the GPL need to
 understand it, at least to the degree possible with no training in
 law, but do I as a user and contributor to GNU/LINUX need to? That I
 thought was the point?

A) The GPLEMU - an engine management unit already used in 14,000
models of car, and 12 other manufactures. I'm heading up the OCMcar
project, and someone suggested using the GPLEMU. I see cars using the
EMU all over the place. It's been roadtested for ten years. People
have sued each other over it, and it's still fine. I'm pretty happy
using the GPLEMU in the OCMcar project, even though I don't understand
it. I don't really need to scrutinise it much.

B) The ODbLEMU - an engine management unit that's not finished yet. It
uses three technologies (contract fusion, database fission and
anti-copyright-matter) that have never been tried before in
combination. It's complex. It's untested. It's not even finished, but
it will be real soon now. It's probably going to work, because the
guys who are making it seem pretty smart and their hearts are in the
right place, but then again, it might not. Reports back from other
Physicst-legals suggest that there might be fundamental science
problems combining those three technologies that simply can't be
overcome.

The OCMcar project board (OCMcarF) are asking me whether I should bet
the farm on the ODbLEMU. I say we need to think it over carefully, and
give it way more scrutiny than I would the GPLEMU. Can you see why?

Cheers,
Andy

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] ODbL comments from Creative Commons

2009-03-25 Thread Rob Myers
SteveC wrote:

 No I think there are some substantial issues, but they're inflated  
 because of the PoV.

I didn't have a chance to get to Science Commons while I was in Boston
last week but I did talk to various people who are Smarter Than Me (tm)
from the FSF and CC and none of them supported copyleft (actually
share-alike) on data. A couple mentioned John specifically.

I still do not entirely agree with them. But I am concerned that, even
if defending the freedom to use geodata against the problems that
Science Commons has chosen (for what they feel are good reasons) not to
address (EU DB right, US database copyright, contract law) is the right
thing to do, the ODbL may end up being ineffective. And that in
jurisdictions those problems do not apply, addressing them by creating
rights in order to give them away may end up being counter-productive.

The Creative Commons licences import strong Moral Rights and Copyright
to where they might not otherwise apply in law or in practice. The ODbL
has the danger of doing the same for Database Right.

And I am really, really worried about the contract element of the ODbL.
All it will take is one database dump of OSM left on a DVD on a bus in a
non-DB-right jurisdiction and that's it...

- Rob.



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