Re: [OSM-legal-talk] To calm some waters - about Section 3
On 25 August 2010 14:13, Richard Weait wrote: > I'm surprised that some individuals in the community are pushing back > so hard on "free and open" not being the right approach. Some would Would that be GPL "free and open" of BSD "free and open" ? As I said before, why is most software GPL when some are pushing for the data to be more like BSD? "Free and Open" have to be 2 of the most abused terms out there because as Simon pointed out, they can mean the complete opposite of each other depending who you are talking to and this ambiguity isn't a good thing to some people, also as Simon pointed out one of the reason I contributed to OSM is because it required share-a-like, and I won't contribute to a mapping project that doesn't support this moral objective, I'm not trying to force my morals on others, but I'm disappointed that others are trying to force theirs on me. If they want a PD project so much why don't they start their own on that basis instead of sneaking things in through the back door? > I'm surprised again because future "OSMF" or "LWG" will be just like > you, or in fact actually be some of you. Or your children. Or your > grandchildren. Yes, there has never been a political debate in history that hasn't been gamed or won through dirty tricks at all. Assuming the current 12-15k number of active contributors I only need to setup 30k sock puppet accounts and that 2/3 majority will shift very quickly in my favour, and if I do it by using cheap labour like some companies do with breaking captchas I don't see this being much of a problem for a few thousand dollars... which is pocket change to some companies... ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] To calm some waters - about Section 3
On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 9:21 PM, Simon Biber wrote: > On Sun, 22 August, 2010 11:55:27 PM, Peteris Krisjanis > wrote: > >> As I'm interested in keeping my data within OSM and find a common ground with >>rest of you, I'm delighted to see that requests to specify 'free and open >>license' in CT section 3 has been taken into account[1]. Huge thanks and sorry >>for any emotional storm it have caused. >> >> [1] http://www.abalakov.com/?p=56 > > Now this has been changed again, seemingly to dilute the given assurance that > the Contributor Terms will be amended to make clear that this refers to an > attribution and share-alike license. > > My reading of the changes means it now only says that some explanation will be > made as to whether this refers to an attribution and/or share-alike license. That's certainly one possibility. We do have more to do, so that the existing terms can be clearer to more people. That will be coming soon as well. But you asked about a specific part of term 3. Term 3 could be changed to specify attribution, virality or both. I'd like to see it stay with "free and open" because I think that "free and open" is best for the future OSM community. Here's why. We can do the license change now because it is the right thing to do, or we can do the license change now and make future license changes simpler for future OpenSteetMap communities. If we leave out a relicensing provision entirely, the future OSM community will have to do this all over again. All of it. Not just casting about for the new license and convincing the majority of the community that the new license is right, but also the figuring out what to do about the data touched by those who disagree. Eliminating that last point seems like a worthy improvement to make to the process. Future license changes will still be hard. There will still be disagreement, ably argued, over NewFreeDbL v2.3 vs. SuperOpenEverything v1.0[1] There will still need to be a 2/3 majority to accept that license. There is bound to be some loss of future mappers after any future license change as well. A license change is not something Free Software communities do for fun. Nor does OSM. I'm surprised that some individuals in the community are pushing back so hard on "free and open" not being the right approach. Some would prefer insisting on attribution as a minimum, others would prefer that we cast both attribution and share alike in stone. I think that both attribution-only and attribution, share alike licenses qualify as "free and open" as are PD-like, or disclaimer-only licenses and many other variations. We know them when we see them. Some of us choose between free and open licenses in the Free Software world depending on context. We choose LGPL for one project and AfferoGPL for another. But we don't choose the license before we know the context. And that is what surprises me about the push-back against term 3. I'm surprised that some in the community believe that they know the context facing the future community better than the future community will know it when they see it. I'm disappointed that some fingers are pointed at "OSMF" and "LWG" as not worthy of trusting with a future license change. Partly that is disappointing because "OSMF" and "LWG" could be any one of you. And I'm surprised again because future "OSMF" or "LWG" will be just like you, or in fact actually be some of you. Or your children. Or your grandchildren. And some of you don't trust your future-selves on the "OSMF" and / or "LWG". So that's a surprise to me. It's even more of a surprise that some of you don't trust a 2/3 majority of your future-selves to make the right decision in a future license choice. But there will be future license changes. Even if they are minor version changes to ODbL v1.1 there will be changes. GPL is on version 3[2]. CC-By is on version 3[3]. If the best of the Free Software licenses have to change over time, and the best of the Free Culture licenses have to change over time, it seems reasonable that the best Open Data license will have to change over time too. We know that future licenses will change because the world is changing. The world is changing in part because OpenStreetMap is changing the world of open geo data. Isn't that right, Ordnance Survey? Best regards, Richard [1] Those are made-up license names. As far as I know they don't exist. [2] Version 1 of GPL was published in 1989 [3] Version 1 of CC-By was published in 2001 ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] To calm some waters - about Section 3
On Sun, 22 August, 2010 11:55:27 PM, Peteris Krisjanis wrote: > As I'm interested in keeping my data within OSM and find a common ground with >rest of you, I'm delighted to see that requests to specify 'free and open >license' in CT section 3 has been taken into account[1]. Huge thanks and sorry >for any emotional storm it have caused. > > [1] http://www.abalakov.com/?p=56 Now this has been changed again, seemingly to dilute the given assurance that the Contributor Terms will be amended to make clear that this refers to an attribution and share-alike license. My reading of the changes means it now only says that some explanation will be made as to whether this refers to an attribution and/or share-alike license. I and many others need a firm commitment to ensure contributions continue to be protected by attribution and share-alike in the future. Without that, if this license change goes ahead, my survey work over the past year, and that of many others, seems likely to be useless for OSM. This is both for a philosophical reason (I don't agree with the open-ended contributor terms) and for a practical reason (I have used aerial photography to confirm some positions, under an agreement that the resulting work could only be released under CC-BY-SA). I want to contribute my mapping work to a community who will respect my wishes that the work remain free. This includes that no-one should be allowed to make a derived work and not allow others to have the same freedom over the derived work. This is the essence of what the FSF calls copyleft, and what CC calls share-alike. It's also what I assumed was one of the core beliefs of the OSM community, since the license at the time I signed up was explicitly a share-alike license, CC-BY-SA. For that philosophical reason, I also agree with the stance of NearMap, which has publically said it cannot accept the current contributor terms, because they could allow derived work to be released under a non-share-alike licence without the agreement of the original authors. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Future relicensing in the contributor terms and data imports
James Livingston writes: > On 23/08/2010, at 4:22 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote: >> Not only the Contributor Terms - the whole project is. Data importing >> should always be the exception and not the rule. > > But is it though? I guess that's the nub of the issue with data imports > and licensing - some people are against > data imports and some people like them. I remember that Frederik has used a word "interoperability" in some of his mails. Most OSM folks seem to think that interoperability means either a) transparent tiles and OpenLayers or b) vacuuming all the geodata with somehow suitable license into OSM. I believe there could be also other ways. It is understandable that road data are imported into the main OSM database because we have lots of our own highway data with better and more up-to-date knowlegde about road attributes. Road data must also be noded for making it suitable for navigation and OSM data model with the spaghetti topology and all the data on a one single layer suits this use. However, some of the data which have been imported could as well be used from somewhere else, like from a separate OSM-Import database or from an external service. Use of SRTM countour lines in OpenCyclemap, Openmtbmap and in some other places is one (only?) good example about using non-OSM data together with OSM data without imports. It is not really a pleasure to try to follow the rules given in documents like http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/documents/Network_Services/INSPIRE%20Draft%20Technical%20Guidance%20Download%20%28Version%202.0%29.pdf Still I think that it is better this way than by having a huge Central Spatial Data Infrastructure database in Brussels. Perhaps we will also start thinking some day that all the data which are possible to import into OSM do not need to be imported but they can still be utilised. I believe that this was what Frederik meant, not that we should map everything by ourselves. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Is CC-BY-SA is compatible with ODbL - a philosophical point
On 08/24/2010 01:33 PM, SomeoneElse wrote: On 24/08/2010 11:35, Ed Avis wrote: ... under the proposed ODbL or whether it would technically be in breach of the contract-law provisions But presumably I as Joe Mapper wouldn't be restricted in going back to the OS with a bunch of errors that I've found after comparing what I've mapped with what the OS throught was there (on the "my data is mine and I can licence it however else I like as well" principle)? I also doubt that a few error corrections extracted from the DB would count as substantial, although IANAL etc. - Rob. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Is CC-BY-SA is compatible with ODbL - a philosophical point
On 24/08/2010 11:35, Ed Avis wrote: ... under the proposed ODbL or whether it would technically be in breach of the contract-law provisions But presumably I as Joe Mapper wouldn't be restricted in going back to the OS with a bunch of errors that I've found after comparing what I've mapped with what the OS throught was there (on the "my data is mine and I can licence it however else I like as well" principle)? ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Contributor Terms - The Early Years
On 23/08/2010 01:34, Richard Weait wrote:
That's an open question for the lawyer that wrote the CT. In casual
conversation with one lawyer ("casual" as in I wasn't paying the
lawyer)
Thanks Richard. What we could do with from the LWG (and I'm sure that
they will look at doing it) is a "here are the new CTs and the new
licence, and here's how we think that it affects you if you've
previously used data from XYZ in OSM and/or intend to do so in the
future" for each large XYZ (Yahoo, OS Opendata, etc.).
I was told that legal-English is not FORTRAN
Be grateful for small mercies I suppose...
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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Is CC-BY-SA is compatible with ODbL - a philosophical point
Jukka Rahkonen writes: >It may be hard to give something back from OSM to many of the data >providers. Public domain sources like USGS cannot take the updates >because they are funded for producing public domain data >(http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/dev/2010-July/020016.html). >Ordance Survey can't take updates because it is also selling licenses >for commercial use. For the Ordnance Survey, there is a small amount of cooperation from OSM in the form of a list of street name errors which they have agreed to look at. Since this is just a list of possible mistakes, it is generally held that this does not breach copyright. It is an interesting question whether this could continue under the proposed ODbL or whether it would technically be in breach of the contract-law provisions. -- Ed Avis ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Future relicensing in the contributor terms and data imports
On 24 August 2010 11:18, James Livingston wrote: > On 23/08/2010, at 4:22 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote: > > Not only the Contributor Terms - the whole project is. Data importing > should always be the exception and not the rule. > > But is it though? I guess that's the nub of the issue with data imports and > licensing - some people are against data imports and some people like them. > > > Ignoring my personal view on whether imports are good or not, I think that > we shouldn't have exceptions to the rule. I think we should either have a > rule preventing imports (the *only* exception being for true PD, no > copyright holder, data) or we shouldn't have that rule and imports are okay. > > If the rule is "no imports", then we should get rid of the Australian > Government data, the AND data, the MassGIS data, the French castradal data, > and so on. If the rule isn't "no imports", then we need to deal with the > fact they are going to happen and determine how to best fit it all in with > licensing. > The French cadastral information is mostly tracing from a WMS, so I would find it difficult to consider it an import. If you do then you would need to remove also Yahoo and the rest :) Emilie Laffray ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Future relicensing in the contributor terms and data imports
On 23/08/2010, at 4:22 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote: > Not only the Contributor Terms - the whole project is. Data importing should > always be the exception and not the rule. But is it though? I guess that's the nub of the issue with data imports and licensing - some people are against data imports and some people like them. Ignoring my personal view on whether imports are good or not, I think that we shouldn't have exceptions to the rule. I think we should either have a rule preventing imports (the *only* exception being for true PD, no copyright holder, data) or we shouldn't have that rule and imports are okay. If the rule is "no imports", then we should get rid of the Australian Government data, the AND data, the MassGIS data, the French castradal data, and so on. If the rule isn't "no imports", then we need to deal with the fact they are going to happen and determine how to best fit it all in with licensing. I don't think that having an arbitrary decision about which imports are okay is a goo idea, there should be an objective way of saying that they meet the licensing requirements and any other requirements, and then letting them go ahead. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Is CC-BY-SA is compatible with ODbL - a philosophical point
On 23/08/2010, at 6:54 PM, Jukka Rahkonen wrote: > It may be hard to give something back from OSM to many of the data > providers. Public domain sources like USGS cannot take the updates > because they are funded for producing public domain data > (http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/dev/2010-July/020016.html). > Ordance Survey can't take updates because it is also selling licenses > for commercial use. Thus both the European and American mapping agencies > have one thing in common, they can't accept updates from OSM community > but they need to build their own community feed back systems. That's going to be a problem no matter what license anyone picks, us or them. The only way that you can have free two-way reuse is for both parties to 1) use exactly the same licence, or 2) for both parties not constrain the licensing on derived works. (1) isn't feasible because we would want that reuse with multiple parties and that would mean every single group we want to share data with would have to use the same license. Various companies and governments around the world aren't going to use exactly the same licence because the legal environment is different. (2) isn't going to happen because that would mean everyone essentially saying that their work can be re-licensed by any to an license that choose. One group requires attribution (e.g. the ABS) and one group can't require it (USGS), no matter what we do, we can't have two-way reuse with both those parties. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
