[od-discuss] Status of Vancouver and Surrey OGL varients

Wed Dec 10 07:52:47 UTC 2014

On 11/20/2014 1:45 PM, Mike Linksvayer wrote:
>
>     A bigger issue to me is that I've been told by governments using
>     them that the OGL-BC derived licenses (OGL-Surrey, OGL-Vancouver)
>     are not compatible with CC BY, ODC-BY or the ODbL. Because the
>     Canadian OGL variants are essentially only usable by a single
>     government, this leaves me with an impossible situation for making
>     works from multiple sources and my work.
>
>
> That's also extremely annoying but wouldn't make the licenses non-open 
> per the definition.
>
While I agree in principle that an open license need not be compatible 
with other open licenses, I am worried by licenses which are 
interoperable with neither CC or ODC licenses.

I am not sure that a non-reusable license which fails to be compatible 
with any other open licenses can be considered open. If I take Vancouver 
data, modify it and add my own copyrightable contributions, and want to 
release the new work, I cannot do so under any open license. Other open 
licenses are not compatible, and I cannot release it under the 
OGL-Vancouver license as I am not the City of Vancouver.* To my mind, 
this is non-open.

* There is an argument to be made that it is possible for an individual 
to release their own works under the OGL-Vancouver license, but to pick 
that license for your own creation would be questionable.
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