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

Mon Jul 22 13:38:58 UTC 2013

*

On 22 July 2013 13:28, Kent Mewhort <kent at openissues.ca> wrote:
*

>  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.*
>

Hi Kent, trying to get this clear: redistributing a work under an open
licence is *not* sublicensing, but releasing the original work under a
different licence *is*?
Could you clarify what the difference is between these two cases? Is it the
licencor?

Thanks, Sander

> 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.pdfhttp://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
>
> _______________________________________________
> od-discuss mailing listod-discuss at lists.okfn.orghttp://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/od-discuss
> Unsubscribe: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/od-discuss
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> od-discuss mailing list
> od-discuss at lists.okfn.org
> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/od-discuss
> Unsubscribe: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/od-discuss
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/od-discuss/attachments/20130722/ff1a82ab/attachment-0001.html>