On 2013-02-23 09:05, Simon Poole wrote:
A trademark and other IP use policy is one of the things the new OSMF
How do we reconcile relatively permissive use of the OSM database, with relatively restrictive use of the Open Street Map name? For the moment, I put to one side Stallman's argument that "there is no such thing as intellectual property" [1].
It is contradictory to say one part of Open Street Map's intellectual property (the database) can be freely used, inspected, redistributed and modified, while another part (the name) cannot.
Why is one shared, given away, while the other is guarded, coveted, owned, protected, monopolised?
Of the four strands of intellectual property, three are willingly shared by and amongst digital commons projects: copyrightable material, databases and patents. The latter is an odd case in that publishing it means it can't be monopolised, but the end result is the same: neither of these three is owned and locked away from the rest of the world.
The other strand, trademarks, is locked away by the various relevant projects. Any suggestions why? Or why we should continue to do this?
[1] http://www.gnu.org/doc/fsfs-ii-2.pdf -- robin http://universitywithoutconditions.ac.nz - Auckland's Free University _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
