Hi, Henk Hoff wrote: > If there is a need to sue, we (the Foundation) will sue. Otherwise it > will work as a precedence towards other parties.
So the individual contributor allows OSMF to distribute his data under ODbL or another license they choose (within a well-defined range). However the contributor agreement does not say anything like "in return, OSMF promises to take suitable steps to enforce the license". This means that if the contributor is unhappy because he feels the license is violated, he has legal recourse against neither the violator nor OSMF. He can of course use OSMF-internal democratic means to convince the board to take action, but other than that he is powerless. Should there perhaps be an element that allows the individual contributor to sue OSMF if he believes that they are not protecting the data as he thought they would? To give an extreme example; assume that Fearsome Fred and his Karlsruhe Klique infiltrate OSMF and get to have a majority there. Fearsome Fred wants OSM to be public domain, however he knows that he will not be able to convince a majority of mappers to change the license as per the contributor agreement, so instead he makes the following public statement: "Folks, OSM is still ODbL by the letter but rest assured that you can simply use OSM as if it were PD, because I am OSMF and I am not going to sue you." What can Enraged Etienne, who has single-handedly mapped half of England and who has, albeit grudgingly, trusted OSMF to protect his data under ODbL, do to stop Fearsome Fred? Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-t...@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
