Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Exception in Open Data License/Community Guidelines for temporary file
Hi, On 06/29/11 05:21, James Livingston wrote: I don't think it would be treated differently, because I believe that an in-memory data structure would still be a database (in the ODbL and database right sense of database). I don't see how the storage mechanism makes a difference. Would you therefore say that before I can use proprietary software to process an ODbL data set, I would have to request from the software provider a legal statement about whether or not it does create a database internally? If I use software that builds an in-memory data structure which you believe to be a database in order to make a produced work, how would you suggest that I fulfil my obligation to make such derived database available on request? Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Exception in Open Data License/Community Guidelines for temporary file
On 29/06/2011, at 4:25 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote: On 06/29/11 05:21, James Livingston wrote: I don't think it would be treated differently, because I believe that an in-memory data structure would still be a database (in the ODbL and database right sense of database). I don't see how the storage mechanism makes a difference. Would you therefore say that before I can use proprietary software to process an ODbL data set, I would have to request from the software provider a legal statement about whether or not it does create a database internally? That's a slightly different point, what I was trying to say was that if you have something in memory that doesn't qualify as a database, then it won't magically become a database if it happens to be swapped to disk. Conversely, if you have something that is a database, it doesn't stop being a database because you load it into memory. Being a structured representation of data makes it a database, not where the bits happen to be. To your point, what happens when someone loads a .osm file into JOSM? First, I'd claim that a .osm file is a database. Obviously not a relational database that gets handled by SQL-using software, but still a database. I'd also claim that the in-memory data structures of JOSM form a database too. The ODbL saud Database - A collection of material (the Contents) arranged in a systematic or methodical way and individually accessible by electronic or other means offered under the terms of this License. I think the data structures JOSM uses to view and edit certainly qualifies. If you immediately saved it back to a file after loading, it would go Database (on disk) - Database (in JOSM memory) - Database (on disk), not Database - Non-database - Database. The data stored in the in-memory database is equivalent to the on-disk one, but it's still there. I would think that the vast majority of software that does useful work will need to create a temporary database to do so. I've never looked how Mapnik is implemented, but I assume it creates a bunch of data as it goes about what POIs and labels it is rendering where, so the map doesn't get too crowded. Is that a derived (temporary) database? If I use software that builds an in-memory data structure which you believe to be a database in order to make a produced work, how would you suggest that I fulfil my obligation to make such derived database available on request? I have absolutely no idea. It's one of the many things I don't know about how the produced works part of the ODbL will work in practice. -- James ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Multiple license declaration
I moved the multiple licensing site out of beta. You cannot not revoke licenses once they are accepted. I hope it will be useful. http://timsc.dev.openstreetmap.org/extralicenses/ Tim ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] CTs are not full copyright assignment
Hi Tom, Sure they won't be able to edit now until they accept, but we consider that a reasonable step to try and move forward with the licensing process. OK, then let me rephrase my concern using your language: „The CT make the voting right dependent upon being able to edit. This gives the sysadmins the power to decide who is a potential voter and who isn't. Some of the sysadmins have argued that this is not a problem. They ask us to trust them that they will never remove any voting rights by removing edit rights. The sysadmins underline this request for trust by removing the edit rights of all people who do not accept the CT, thereby also removing the voting rights.“ Asking us to block everybody for six months so a vote could be rigged would clearly be unreasonable and would be ignored. Where do I find the sysadmin policy for evaluating whether a blocking request is considered „unreasonable“? I have been repeatedly told that making the voting right dependent upon the edit right is not a problem and that the CT do not need to be fixed, because the sysadmin team will always be reasonable. At the same time, the same people tell me that it is entirely reasonable to block my edit right and to thus remove my voting right. I see a contradiction here. I (and several others) have explained the problem again and again. I once made a constructive proposal for one potential way to fix the problem, which was met both with well-grounded criticism and with personal attacks. Hardly anyone of the people who criticised my suggestion have made any efforts to seriously work towards alternative solutions to the problem, and those who did were themselves ignored. This email is my last try before I give up. Olaf ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] CTs are not full copyright assignment
On 29/06/11 15:59, Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer wrote: Hi Tom, Asking us to block everybody for six months so a vote could be rigged would clearly be unreasonable and would be ignored. Where do I find the sysadmin policy for evaluating whether a blocking request is considered „unreasonable“? There isn't one. I'm not entirely sure what it would say if it existed as it is hard to write such things down in concrete terms as it is by definition a very subjective judgement. I have been repeatedly told that making the voting right dependent upon the edit right is not a problem and that the CT do not need to be fixed, because the sysadmin team will always be reasonable. At the same time, the same people tell me that it is entirely reasonable to block my edit right and to thus remove my voting right. I see a contradiction here. I (and several others) have explained the problem again and again. My problem is that the CTs seem, to me, to be making a reasonable effort to describe a workable way to determine who is an active contributor and all I've seen in response is ever more implausible scenarios which involve some large number of people collaborating maliciously over a long period of time to somehow subvert that definition. If you have a better way of defining active contributor that is workable then please tell us what it is. I once made a constructive proposal for one potential way to fix the problem, which was met both with well-grounded criticism and with personal attacks. Hardly anyone of the people who criticised my suggestion have made any efforts to seriously work towards alternative solutions to the problem, and those who did were themselves ignored. What exactly was this constructive proposal? Tom -- Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu) http://compton.nu/ ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] CTs are not full copyright assignment
Hi, Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer wrote: I once made a constructive proposal for one potential way to fix the problem, which was met both with well-grounded criticism and with personal attacks. Care to point out the latter? If I were to say that I'm beginning to think you must have a very skewed definition of personal attack, would that count as a personal attack ;)? Hardly anyone of the people who criticised my suggestion have made any efforts to seriously work towards alternative solutions to the problem, I raised the concern that any change in contributor terms would be next to unworkable because one would have to ask everyone AGAIN to agree to the new terms. As long as this question is unresolved, working towards any change in the CTs would probably be considered moot by many. So before we discuss if better CTs are possible and how they would look like, we should determine what flexibility we have, if any. 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] Exception in Open Data License/Community Guidelines for temporary file
Hi, James Livingston wrote: If I use software that builds an in-memory data structure which you believe to be a database in order to make a produced work, how would you suggest that I fulfil my obligation to make such derived database available on request? I have absolutely no idea. It's one of the many things I don't know about how the produced works part of the ODbL will work in practice. Thinking about this more, the problem would only occur if you have a black-box software wich might or might not create a database internally, and the thing that falls out of the black box is a produced work that you will publicly use. Because then, and only then, will you have to share the derived database upon which the produced work is based. If, on the other hand, out of the black box comes a derived database, then you can simply share *that* database and nobody cares what happened in the black box, because you only have to share the last in a chain of derived databases that leads to a produced work, right? 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] Exception in Open Data License/Community Guidelines for temporary file
If I use software that builds an in-memory data structure which you believe to be a database in order to make a produced work, how would you suggest that I fulfil my obligation to make such derived database available on request? I have absolutely no idea. It's one of the many things I don't know about how the produced works part of the ODbL will work in practice. Thinking about this more, the problem would only occur if you have a black-box software wich might or might not create a database internally, and the thing that falls out of the black box is a produced work that you will publicly use. Because then, and only then, will you have to share the derived database upon which the produced work is based. No, this happens with all software, regardless of the software license. Who is reading the source code of a free software just to know if creates internal database? ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] CTs are not full copyright assignment
What's wrong with asking everyone AGAIN ? If something is wrong, then it cannot be difficult to correct. If a youg organization as OSM is not flexible, who the hell on earth IS ? Or even better, let the community choose what CT/LICENSE is best. Email is free, and a voting webtool is available (almost)!!! Tims webpage lets us choose from a number of license alternatives. (http://timsc.dev.openstreetmap.org/extralicenses/ ) Add some slighty better elaborated explanations, and anyone will be able to understand the consequences of his/her vote. Much better then to be let the choice of accept the current CT or your contributions will be deleted. As a bonus it may even restore the community and you OSMF , LWG and Sysadmins may get the ODBL as well. Gert -Oorspronkelijk bericht- Van: Frederik Ramm [mailto:frede...@remote.org] Verzonden: woensdag 29 juni 2011 20:00 Aan: Licensing and other legal discussions. Onderwerp: Re: [OSM-legal-talk] CTs are not full copyright assignment Hi, Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer wrote: I once made a constructive proposal for one potential way to fix the problem, which was met both with well-grounded criticism and with personal attacks. Care to point out the latter? If I were to say that I'm beginning to think you must have a very skewed definition of personal attack, would that count as a personal attack ;)? Hardly anyone of the people who criticised my suggestion have made any efforts to seriously work towards alternative solutions to the problem, I raised the concern that any change in contributor terms would be next to unworkable because one would have to ask everyone AGAIN to agree to the new terms. As long as this question is unresolved, working towards any change in the CTs would probably be considered moot by many. So before we discuss if better CTs are possible and how they would look like, we should determine what flexibility we have, if any. 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 ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Exception in Open Data License/Community Guidelines for temporary file
Hi, Kai Krueger wrote: If, on the other hand, out of the black box comes a derived database, then you can simply share *that* database and nobody cares what happened in the black box, because you only have to share the last in a chain of derived databases that leads to a produced work, right? Am I allowed to declare my png mapnik tile as a derived database, stick an ODbL label on it an be done with it? I've been thinking about that. It would certainly be within the legal definition of a database to call a PNG file a database. This would mean that the producer of a map tile has a choice - either declare your map tile to be ODbL, lose the ability to license your map tile differently, but not have to share any databases behind it; or choose to declare your map tile a produced work that you can license in a different way but then you have to share the database behind it. Our community norm currently says it is a database if it was intended to extract the data... some time in the past someone said it is a database if you say it is one. Maybe that wasn't so bad after all. 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] CTs are not full copyright assignment
Tom Hughes-3 wrote: If you have a better way of defining active contributor that is workable then please tell us what it is. One could have given voting rights to all people who have once reached active contributor status and retain sufficient interest in the project to keep their email address up to date and respond to the vote within 3 weeks. This way, one would also have no need to write an automated script to move a lone node around every month to ensure one retains voting rights. However, Frederick is correct, that this kind of change to the CT (i.e. definitions of who is allowed to vote and how) is indeed very hard, as it would be incompatible with the current CT, as it is a global change rather than a change just effecting the local contributor. I.e. one can't do what has been done with the upgrade from CT version 1 to 1.2.4 (i.e. different people are on different versions of the CT), or what could be done to e.g. clarify the meaning of the combination of clause 1 and 2 of the CT with respect to third party rights. What could however be done without requiring to reask everyone to update to the latest CT, would be to include a sentence in that clause along the line that OSMF may only ban you from editing if there is clear indication of vandalism to the data or if other technical missuse can be shown. Thus political banning of people who don't agree with the OSMF will no longer be allowed and thus couldn't affect who is eligible for voting. Then one wouldn't need to rely on the sysadmins being reasonable and the sysadmins would not be in the awkward position of having to decide if OSMF is being reasonable or not. -- View this message in context: http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/OSM-legal-talk-Phase-4-and-what-it-means-tp6440812p6530437.html Sent from the 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] Exception in Open Data License/Community Guidelines for temporary file
Kai Krueger wrote: Am I allowed to declare my png mapnik tile as a derived database, stick an ODbL label on it an be done with it? Then I don't have to reverse engineer my render to figure out if or if not it produces an internal database and worry about having to maintaining a snapshot of that database for ever and what legal consequences there might be if my dog eats the backup, etc. I'd be back to the simplicity of CC-BY-SA, i.e. that all obligations of the licenses are met within the work I hand out itself and have no additional work (or worries) beyond producing the product in the first place. +1, I couldn't have expressed this better. For many use cases, it's a massive burden that you need to hand out other things besides the product you originally wanted to produce. The worst part is, of course, that nobody seems to be able to tell you with any certainty what these things are. But even without that uncertainty, it's often just plain impractical: Right now, Joe Mapper can download a 3D renderer/viewer (= use case which is relevant for me personally), load an .osm file to have a virtual landscape generated, fly around a bit, hit PrtSc to take a snapshot of his carefully-mapped home town and proudly publish it on his blog, make it available on gnome-look.org as a desktop background or whatever. The requirement to publish the image with a CC-BY-SA label attached seems perfectly reasonable and easy to comply with. But with ODbL, he suddenly might have to publish the temporary database that the 3D renderer created in the process. He will not even understand what he needs to do, and if he did, he'd have a hard time uploading that x00 MB binary blob to gnome-look.org alongside with his desktop background. And nobody would want it anyway! -- Tobias Knerr ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Exception in Open Data License/Community Guidelines for temporary file
Frederik Ramm wrote: If, on the other hand, out of the black box comes a derived database, then you can simply share *that* database and nobody cares what happened in the black box, because you only have to share the last in a chain of derived databases that leads to a produced work, right? I would be interested to hear the view of someone wise who knows about these things, because I'm not convinced that ODbL mandates publishing the source (or diff) in every single circumstance. If your interim derived database is a fairly trivial transformation, as I suspect many will be, then your changes aren't quantitatively Substantial; therefore ODbL's provisions may not apply; therefore you may not have to publish the derivative. And yes, as Jonathan Harley says, the diff requirement can also be fulfilled by providing an algorithm. (I don't think that ODbL requires all the components of the algorithm need be open source, FWIW.) I am really really really not a lawyer. cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/Exception-in-Open-Data-License-Community-Guidelines-for-temporary-file-tp6504201p6530822.html Sent from the 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] Exception in Open Data License/Community Guidelines for temporary file
Hi, Richard Fairhurst wrote: The Directive says a database [snip Richard's quote and replace mine from http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31996L0009:EN:HTML] Article 1 Scope 1. This Directive concerns the legal protection of databases in any form. 2. For the purposes of this Directive, 'database` shall mean a collection of independent works, data or other materials arranged in a systematic or methodical way and individually accessible by electronic or other means. I would say that a list of 65536 colour values (the data), arranged in a systematic way in 256 columns and 256 rows, and individually accessible by a PNG reader, certainly sounds like a database according to this defintion? I'm just speculating here but if I had a rendering engine that would transform the OSM planet file into a giant bitmap (colour values arranged, etc.), I would not be surprised if I could get away with sharing this bitmap as a derived database under ODbL. I guess someone who printed it out would then create a produced work, but me? Not a lawyer here either, and frankly if we took the position that every map tile was indeed a database, then a lot of the advantages we see in ODbL would crumble. But, as Kai suggested, in some situations it may actually make things easier for you if you could say this PNG file is a database; and the current community norm does seem to allow a lot of interpretation. Ok, so my PNG file was intended to extract the data. It didn't work out in the end but the intention was there... ) 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
