[geo-discuss] PGL and geodata licensing (was Re: [OSGeo-Board] Bylaws posted )

Wed Mar 1 10:38:48 UTC 2006

On Wed, Mar 01, 2006 at 08:36:11AM +0000, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
> >license which precludes that. Steve Coast more or less declared
> >CC-BY-SA by fiat, and no-one contributing seems unhappy with that now.
> 
> (tentatively sticks hand up)

I'm not really very happy about it either - it's not smart enough, but I
think Steve knows that and just doesn't want to make a decision until
something well-thought-through appears worked on by people with interest
and expertise.

That could be a job for publicgeodata - jo, you said 'namespace', I guess
I think when considering whether bringing together bits of CC-SA / GPL
and aspects of the PGL would be desirable.

I'm getting the feeling that there are two things going on here that
could be usefully separated:

#1 Publicgeodata.org as a political campaign platform for putting
state-collected geodata in the public domain 

#2 Publicgeodata.org as a site for producing a lisencing structure for more
precise definitions of private ownership and sharing of geodata and
software.

I'd say #1 is the clearer job description here because the state coerces
us to provide remuneration for people's work.

Public Domain works really well for state collected geodata. The closest
thing we can get to having that in the world is the desirable,
politically and practically straightforward goal for the lisencing of
state-collected geodata.

#2 Tricky, but I think the same is true as above, but I think it will be
much harder to sell because people have to be remunerated or rewarded in
some way for the work they do as developers or data collectors.

There are probably quite rational ways to do this, but I think the issue,
which is basically a labour issue, is so clouded by lisencing talk, and
hampered by the complexity of generating micro-markets for geodata that
the mailing list threads invariably spiral into verbiage and end up with
CC-BY-SA and deferral.

I think Steve is smart - basically the first project to harness enough
valuable, live information through a process of distributed,
non-commercial, aggregation of geodata will be able to define the
remuneration / reward structure - which will be the lisence. If this can
be done without undermining the source of that value (the labour of those
involved), it will work.

So maybe for the time being it's sensible to concentrate on lobbying for
the data we pay for to be made public domain, and leave the development
of value and systems for aggregating it to the process of development,
smart partnerships and publicity to get more cool people involved.

Bleh

Sorry for the verbiage!

X

Saul.