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

Wed Mar 1 12:05:11 UTC 2006

About licensing issues, I think there's for geodata places for at least 
two kind of licensing models:
- a "GPL-like" one, in the purpose of reproducing the success of free 
software for geodata
- a "creative commons-like", to be compliant with more-or-less 
proprietary models too

Current initiatives are not intented to go into unfinishable argues, but 
only to clearly encouarge collaborative work on licensing issues, and 
specificities, of geographic data. (we need lawyers worldwide ! ;-)

I think we need:
- metadata (even a small text file is better than nothing !)
- data history (to keep derivative work accuracy)

So the Richard's point of view upon derivative works seems very 
important to me, for further releases of PGL or PGL-howto.

Thanks,

Yours,

Daniel FAIVRE

Richard Fairhurst a écrit :

> Hi all,
>
> Jo wrote:
>
>> There have been several bursts of licensing conversation on the
>> openstreetmap list over the last year. Each time it never really
>> reached a resolution; the main sticking point seems to be commercial /
>> noncommercial use of open geodata. Some people are just not happy to
>> allow commercial reuse of their work without restriction, and want a
>> 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 a fan of ShareAlike licences at all, for two reasons. Firstly, 
> I think they "ghettoise" software/data for use solely by a small, 
> fairly homogenous community, rather than opening them up to the many 
> and varied uses that organisations of all types might want to put them 
> to. Secondly, the economics tend to reward the technician (the whole 
> Linux model of "selling associated services and expertise") rather 
> than the artist.
>
> But I realise it's a minority view, and I'm contributing to OSM 
> because it's a great project which will enrich the world, even if I 
> don't agree with the licensing. geowiki.com v2 may seek to offer a 
> much smaller, but public domain dataset as a supplementary.
>
> What I would suggest, though, is that any geodata licence needs to be 
> 100% clear on what it means by a "derivative work". Does that include 
> (a) an enlarged geodata set? (clearly, yes). (b) a map made from the 
> geodata? (c) a website or book using such a map?
>
> cheers
> Richard
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> geo-discuss at lists.okfn.org
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