I am still thinking about this and look forward to Alex's talk next month in DC.
However, as a "business user" who directed a lot of money toward OSM at one point in my career, I thought it would be useful to run through why the SA aspects of the license were important to me at the time. I was at MapQuest back then, and Steve Coast was at Microsoft. Both companies spent substantial amounts on proprietary data to run their maps (still do :). It seemed to me that the better option would have been to get a consortium of like-minded companies together and provide support to the vibrant OSM community instead, commoditize the data layer by helping the community however we could, and then compete at a layer above the data. Other companies that were not fundamentally behind open data would go their own way, including my other former employer Google. But back then I would have loved for MapQuest and Microsoft to get together and support data behind by a SA license. And if other companies wanted to join in too, that would have been great. And if others wanted to go their own way, they could do so outside the "common wealth" protected by SA. Didn't quite happen that way in the end, but that was my thinking. I don't know whether SA would help or hurt in this regard at this point in time. Would love to discuss as I am still forming an opinion, and again I am looking forward to Alex's talk. The other thing that might be interesting on this topic: the legal team back in the day had no problem with the older CC BY-SA license (obviously, because we launched), but I recall a preference for the then-impending ODbL. Not sure how many of you have worked at a large public corporation, but trust me the legal teams there can be *quite* conservative. This was not a startup with small data and timid VCs, and it was just fine. So companies shouldn't worry about using OSM, becoming Mapbox customers, etc. The companies that should worry are the ones banking on proprietary data to provide long-term value! The hallmark of the "business user" is pragmatism. What will yield the better data, the better community, etc. I am not quite sure yet but am keeping an open mind. -Randy On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 10:26 AM, Alex Barth <a...@mapbox.com> wrote: > Hello everyone - > > I've been sitting on writing about the detrimental effects of > OpenStreetMap's share-alike license (ODbL) for a while and finally decided > to, um, share. I've been listening long to many OpenStreetMappers I respect > a ton telling me it's not so bad and it's just what we're stuck with right > now. But given how bad share alike is for OpenStreetMap I don't think we > should give up for pushing for a more open license. Here's why I think > share-alike hurts OpenStreetMap and how this keeps OpenStreetMap from having > the full impact it could have: > > http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/lxbarth/diary/21221 > > Looking forward to your comments, > > Alex > > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-us mailing list > Talk-us@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us > _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
