The folks at Creative Commons and Science Commons would be happy to help out in the creation of a public domain repository. My opinions on the difficulties of using "copyleftish" licenses on data are well known and I won't rehash them here :-)
jtw >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I've had some recent discussions with Joseph Gentle and Kari Pihkala about the desire to maintain a "clean" repository of data collected for OSM that would be released in the public domain before being imported into OSM. This would allow anyone to use the data without having to worry about the OSM license restrictions, especially the viral portions. I wasn't a proponent of this "public domain approach" until I started to learn about the licensing issue and some of the problems and complications it can cause. I know believe things are a lot simpler if my OSM data is just released into the public domain before it is contributed. I believe there is (at least a small) group that would also like to release there data into the public domain before it is contributed to OSM. Joseph and Kari have given their support to setting up a repository for this public domain data. I'm not sure yet exactly what this repository will look like, or how much of the OSM software stack we will need to replicate. I don't want this to turn into a fork of OSM. I'd rather see it as a holding basin mechanism that can be used to release data collected for OSM into the public domain before it is uploaded to the main OSM database. Joseph, Kari, and I thought it would be wise to bounce this idea of the legal-talk mailing list. Are there any strong objections to our setting up a public domain repository, and if so, what are the objections? Would it be appropriate to start a separate mailing list for those interested in releasing the data they collect for OSM under the public domain? I'd like to work with Joseph to get the infrastructure we'll need for this project lined up. This will likely include finding a sponsor organization and doing some work on a simple websiter or wiki. However, we thought it wise to mention our idea here before we take any concrete steps. Landon _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk