On Wed, 2010-09-22 at 00:16 +0200, Frederik Ramm wrote: > > Wont anything in writing have to be re-negotiated soon? > > No. If you get something in writing that says "you can use this for > OpenStreetMap" then wherever "OpenStreetMap" goes, the data goes too.
If we cant even convince a mapping group like NearMap of that licence certainty, what chance do we have of convincing governments? This means youre asking data sources to licence their data under an unknown licence, and to just hope and trust that OSM wont change in the future (its not disputed that it WILL change in the future). > No re-negotiation necessary. We have had several such donations in Germany > where data was explicitly given to us not under license A or license B > but under the terms that "this data may be used in OpenStreetMap, > whatever their license". Out of interest, has anyone asked these donators what they feel about the licence their data is under, being changed? Maybe they simply did some research at the time, found out what licence OSM is under, and agreed, assuming that there wouldnt be any drastic changes. This method may work well for data sources that are public anyway, but if the data supplier is licencing their data to other places, they need to ensure they dont lose their licenced customers who might choose to use OSM data instead of licencing from them. > Actually, sometimes it is easier to convince your counterpart in > government to give the data to you than to have them publish it under a > license (whatever the license is). The thing is, theyre not 'giving' it to you, theyre giving you the rights/permissions to use it. They still own the data, and the rights to change the licence on it, the same way OSM owns its data and has the right to change the licence on it. Personally, Im not really fussed what the licence of OSM is, as I only have a personal interest in it. What I worry about though is that this long drawn out argument is ripping OSM apart at the seams. We've lost a number of excellent data sources in Australia due to the uncertainty with OSM licences and I worry that a lot of mappers, users and data suppliers will move on if its not resolved soon. If you want evidence of users losing interest, just look at how the traffic on the mailing lists and chat rooms has dropped in the past few weeks. David _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
