[OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA
I apologize in advance for distracting everyone's attention from mapping and other pleasures with a long mail about licenses. However, I have begun to seriously doubt the decision to choose ODbL as the one future OSM license, and believe we should have another look at the license that will ultimately be used for the database published by OSMF. In a nutshell: The Contributor Terms give the OSMF the right to publish OSM data under the terms of the CC-BY-SA. I suggest that the OSMF should use that right, and *continue to publish the OSM database under CC-BY-SA* after the end of the license change process. So do I suggest to stop the license change process? No, I don't. The Contributor Terms will solve many problems on their own, so my suggestion is what could be labelled CT + CC-BY-SA. Do I suggest to abandon ODbL? No. Though I do not like ODbL very much, I do not oppose making the OSM database available under that license. If there are people who want to use OSM under ODbL terms - and I expect there will be some - we can allow them to do so by dual licensing our database. But what I'm asking for is that we continue to offer fresh OSM data under the most attractive license for many honest and productive users of our data: CC-BY-SA. Now for the details. In my opinion, CC-BY-SA has very desirable features: * It is easy to comply with. * It is popular and trusted. Below, I will explain why - so if something doesn't seem instantly obvious to you, read on. In addition, I will address the following topics commonly discussed in the context of our license change: * Collective attribution * Compatibility with other licenses * Future-Proofness * Uncertainty and doubt * Inadequate protection * CC-BY-SA is easy to comply with. * This is what I consider the most compelling benefit. After all, if it's easy to work with OSM, then people will create cool stuff (products, produced works). With CC-BY-SA, you add a license note and attribution to your product and you are done. All other effects are purely legal (letting people copy and modify your work), and do not require any effort on your part. ODbL expects you to do the same, but adds another, far more onerous requirement: publishing derivative databases used in the creation of your products. It is hard to understand what these are, and it is often a challenge to distinguish them from produced works. Publishing the derivative databases can be a significant burden when compared with creation and distribution of the product itself. That's not a new discovery, by the way, and that's why the license attempts to solve the issue by letting you instead describe the process of reproducing the derivative database. Unfortunately, that option is not clearly defined, might not be possible with proprietary software, and can again be a significant burden for any producer using OSM data. * CC-BY-SA is popular and trusted. * The Creative Commons brand is well-known. ODbL and OKF are not. CC's popularity is for a large part due to its presence in art and popular culture, which is something that a pure database license will never fully achieve. The openness instantly associated with the CC licenses by many is an important differentiator for OSM when it is compared with closed competitors like Google Map Maker. People won't compare two walls of legal text. But if they learn that OSM uses CC, they know we're the good guys. * Collective attribution * We want to make sure that users of the data do not need to list all individual contributors. Luckily, contributors now make data available to the OSMF under terms that don't usually require attribution, and the OSMF re-publishes it under an license requiring attribution. Therefore, collective attribution should be safe with a CT + CC-BY-SA solution. * Future-Proofness * We want to be able to change the license in the future if the geodata environment changes drastically. This is not related to ODbL, but a feature of the CT. * Uncertainty and Doubt * Another reason frequently suggested for the switch to CT + ODbL is making it easier for users of the data to know what they need to do in order to conform to the license requirements. The first aspect is who do you ask if you aren't sure? It has been suggested that introducing the Contributor Terms makes it easier to get a useful response because you no longer need to ask thousands of individuals for their interpretations of the license, but this seems to be a property of the CT, not of the ODbL. As far as the licenses themselves are concerned, I observe that CC-BY-SA seems to be /easier/ for people to interpret. Among the reasons for this might again be the popularity of the licenses: CC-BY-SA images are used by thousands of newspapers and websites, so I can just follow their example when using OSM maps in a similar manner and will likely not get it completely wrong. But it goes beyond that. The complexity of the ODbL itself makes it hard to define what you need to do to comply,
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA
Tobias, thank you for writing this. It seems you are speaking from the hearts of many people. thanks, mike On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 6:11 PM, Tobias Knerr o...@tobias-knerr.de wrote: I apologize in advance for distracting everyone's attention from mapping and other pleasures with a long mail about licenses. However, I have begun to seriously doubt the decision to choose ODbL as the one future OSM license, and believe we should have another look at the license that will ultimately be used for the database published by OSMF. In a nutshell: The Contributor Terms give the OSMF the right to publish OSM data under the terms of the CC-BY-SA. I suggest that the OSMF should use that right, and *continue to publish the OSM database under CC-BY-SA* after the end of the license change process. So do I suggest to stop the license change process? No, I don't. The Contributor Terms will solve many problems on their own, so my suggestion is what could be labelled CT + CC-BY-SA. Do I suggest to abandon ODbL? No. Though I do not like ODbL very much, I do not oppose making the OSM database available under that license. If there are people who want to use OSM under ODbL terms - and I expect there will be some - we can allow them to do so by dual licensing our database. But what I'm asking for is that we continue to offer fresh OSM data under the most attractive license for many honest and productive users of our data: CC-BY-SA. Now for the details. In my opinion, CC-BY-SA has very desirable features: * It is easy to comply with. * It is popular and trusted. Below, I will explain why - so if something doesn't seem instantly obvious to you, read on. In addition, I will address the following topics commonly discussed in the context of our license change: * Collective attribution * Compatibility with other licenses * Future-Proofness * Uncertainty and doubt * Inadequate protection * CC-BY-SA is easy to comply with. * This is what I consider the most compelling benefit. After all, if it's easy to work with OSM, then people will create cool stuff (products, produced works). With CC-BY-SA, you add a license note and attribution to your product and you are done. All other effects are purely legal (letting people copy and modify your work), and do not require any effort on your part. ODbL expects you to do the same, but adds another, far more onerous requirement: publishing derivative databases used in the creation of your products. It is hard to understand what these are, and it is often a challenge to distinguish them from produced works. Publishing the derivative databases can be a significant burden when compared with creation and distribution of the product itself. That's not a new discovery, by the way, and that's why the license attempts to solve the issue by letting you instead describe the process of reproducing the derivative database. Unfortunately, that option is not clearly defined, might not be possible with proprietary software, and can again be a significant burden for any producer using OSM data. * CC-BY-SA is popular and trusted. * The Creative Commons brand is well-known. ODbL and OKF are not. CC's popularity is for a large part due to its presence in art and popular culture, which is something that a pure database license will never fully achieve. The openness instantly associated with the CC licenses by many is an important differentiator for OSM when it is compared with closed competitors like Google Map Maker. People won't compare two walls of legal text. But if they learn that OSM uses CC, they know we're the good guys. * Collective attribution * We want to make sure that users of the data do not need to list all individual contributors. Luckily, contributors now make data available to the OSMF under terms that don't usually require attribution, and the OSMF re-publishes it under an license requiring attribution. Therefore, collective attribution should be safe with a CT + CC-BY-SA solution. * Future-Proofness * We want to be able to change the license in the future if the geodata environment changes drastically. This is not related to ODbL, but a feature of the CT. * Uncertainty and Doubt * Another reason frequently suggested for the switch to CT + ODbL is making it easier for users of the data to know what they need to do in order to conform to the license requirements. The first aspect is who do you ask if you aren't sure? It has been suggested that introducing the Contributor Terms makes it easier to get a useful response because you no longer need to ask thousands of individuals for their interpretations of the license, but this seems to be a property of the CT, not of the ODbL. As far as the licenses themselves are concerned, I observe that CC-BY-SA seems to be /easier/ for people to interpret. Among the reasons for this might again be the popularity of the licenses: CC-BY-SA images are used by
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA
On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 5:11 PM, Tobias Knerr o...@tobias-knerr.de wrote: I apologize in advance for distracting everyone's attention from mapping and other pleasures with a long mail about licenses. However, I have begun to seriously doubt the decision to choose ODbL as the one future OSM license, and believe we should have another look at the license that will ultimately be used for the database published by OSMF. In a nutshell: The Contributor Terms give the OSMF the right to publish OSM data under the terms of the CC-BY-SA. I suggest that the OSMF should use that right, and *continue to publish the OSM database under CC-BY-SA* after the end of the license change process. So do I suggest to stop the license change process? No, I don't. The Contributor Terms will solve many problems on their own, so my suggestion is what could be labelled CT + CC-BY-SA. Do I suggest to abandon ODbL? No. Though I do not like ODbL very much, I do not oppose making the OSM database available under that license. If there are people who want to use OSM under ODbL terms - and I expect there will be some - we can allow them to do so by dual licensing our database. But what I'm asking for is that we continue to offer fresh OSM data under the most attractive license for many honest and productive users of our data: CC-BY-SA. Now for the details. In my opinion, CC-BY-SA has very desirable features: * It is easy to comply with. * It is popular and trusted. Below, I will explain why - so if something doesn't seem instantly obvious to you, read on. In addition, I will address the following topics commonly discussed in the context of our license change: * Collective attribution * Compatibility with other licenses * Future-Proofness * Uncertainty and doubt * Inadequate protection * CC-BY-SA is easy to comply with. * This is what I consider the most compelling benefit. After all, if it's easy to work with OSM, then people will create cool stuff (products, produced works). With CC-BY-SA, you add a license note and attribution to your product and you are done. All other effects are purely legal (letting people copy and modify your work), and do not require any effort on your part. ODbL expects you to do the same, but adds another, far more onerous requirement: publishing derivative databases used in the creation of your products. It is hard to understand what these are, and it is often a challenge to distinguish them from produced works. Publishing the derivative databases can be a significant burden when compared with creation and distribution of the product itself. That's not a new discovery, by the way, and that's why the license attempts to solve the issue by letting you instead describe the process of reproducing the derivative database. Unfortunately, that option is not clearly defined, might not be possible with proprietary software, and can again be a significant burden for any producer using OSM data. * CC-BY-SA is popular and trusted. * The Creative Commons brand is well-known. ODbL and OKF are not. CC's popularity is for a large part due to its presence in art and popular culture, which is something that a pure database license will never fully achieve. The openness instantly associated with the CC licenses by many is an important differentiator for OSM when it is compared with closed competitors like Google Map Maker. People won't compare two walls of legal text. But if they learn that OSM uses CC, they know we're the good guys. * Collective attribution * We want to make sure that users of the data do not need to list all individual contributors. Luckily, contributors now make data available to the OSMF under terms that don't usually require attribution, and the OSMF re-publishes it under an license requiring attribution. Therefore, collective attribution should be safe with a CT + CC-BY-SA solution. * Future-Proofness * We want to be able to change the license in the future if the geodata environment changes drastically. This is not related to ODbL, but a feature of the CT. * Uncertainty and Doubt * Another reason frequently suggested for the switch to CT + ODbL is making it easier for users of the data to know what they need to do in order to conform to the license requirements. The first aspect is who do you ask if you aren't sure? It has been suggested that introducing the Contributor Terms makes it easier to get a useful response because you no longer need to ask thousands of individuals for their interpretations of the license, but this seems to be a property of the CT, not of the ODbL. As far as the licenses themselves are concerned, I observe that CC-BY-SA seems to be /easier/ for people to interpret. Among the reasons for this might again be the popularity of the licenses: CC-BY-SA images are used by thousands of newspapers and websites, so I can just follow their example when using OSM maps in a similar manner
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA
On 24 July 2011 02:11, Tobias Knerr o...@tobias-knerr.de wrote: So do I suggest to stop the license change process? No, I don't. The Contributor Terms will solve many problems on their own, so my suggestion is what could be labelled CT + CC-BY-SA. This will cause similar/same problems as CT+ODBL, which stops the benefits from sharing a like and being able to take changes that others have made and include them unless they agree to the CT, already you see this with people saying their changes are public domain so the data isn't wasted, but absolutely will never agree to the CTs. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
