[od-discuss] Questions about attribution requirements in OS and English Heritage data

Mon Jul 22 12:28:27 UTC 2013

I find it very odd that these two licences include an attribution 
obligation on any sub-licences, but the licences don't anywhere actually 
grant you any such right to sublicence.  I suspect the drafters may have 
been confused about sub-licencing versus releasing derivative works, 
which is a common mistake in the open licencing.

If you redistribute a work under an open licence, you're not 
sublicencing.  If you distribute a derivative work under the same open 
licence, you're not sublicencing.  If you distribute a derivative work 
under a different but compatible open licence, you're still not 
sublicencing.  You're only sublicencing if you release the *original 
work *(or original portion of a work)**under a *different licence. 
*However, in 99.9% of cases, this is not what you're doing when you 
release a derivative work under a compatible licence.  Rather, the 
original portion of the work in these cases remains under the original 
licence, and your own portion comes under the compatible licence.

Thus, even if the whole clause wasn't moot in these two cases, I'd say 
that because the attribution clause specifically applies to sublicences 
of the original work and not derivative works, it's not a form of 
copyleft.  This is just a legal technicality though; for an attribution 
obligation, it's not going to make much difference if the obligation 
applies only to the original portion of the work or to your portion as 
well (as in a copyleft obligation).  In either case, you need to tag on 
an attribution to the work as a whole.

The distinction between permissive versus copyleft/share-alike really 
only makes a difference for obligations which can attach to only one 
part of the work.  For example, from the software context, if there's an 
obligation to provide source code, a permissive licence would attach 
this obligation only to the original work but not to a derivative work.  
You could integrate the original into your own piece of software and you 
wouldn't need to provide the source code for your own code.  With a 
copyleft licence or clause, however, you would have to provide source 
code for the original code plus your own code.

Kent

On 13-07-22 12:52 PM, Leigh Dodds wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Apologies if this is not the best place to raise this question, but
> I'm trying to understand the implications of some terminology in the
> OS Open Data and English Heritage licenses. I'd be interested in the
> feedback of this group.
>
> The OS and English Heritage are publishing data under what I believe
> are variations of the UK Open Government Licenses:
>
> http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/docs/licences/os-opendata-licence.pdf
> http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/Images/open-government-licence-NE-OS_tcm6-30743.pdf
>
> Both licenses define very specific forms of attribution, but also
> include the following sentence:
>
> "The same attribution statements must be contained in any sub-licences
> of the Information that you grant, together with a requirement that
> any further sub-licences do the same"
>
> My reading of this is that this adds additional requirements,
> essentially making them sharealike licenses, i.e. that any derivatives
> must include similar attribution requirements (and onward
> propagation).
>
> Whether that is the intent or not I don't know, but I'd be interested
> in how others read these terms.
>
> Cheers,
>
> L.
>
> --
> Leigh Dodds
> Freelance Technologist
> Open Data, Linked Data Geek
> t: @ldodds
> w: ldodds.com
> e: leigh at ldodds.com
>
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