[od-discuss] OGL UK v3.0 decision time

Tue Oct 28 04:31:27 UTC 2014

On 10/27/2014 09:12 PM, Mike Linksvayer wrote:
> On 10/26/2014 01:56 PM, Luis Villa wrote:
>> I apologize that I have not had time to devote to ODC lately, and I
>> apologize to the authors of the OGL for not providing this feedback at a
>> time when it would have been more useful. Nevertheless, some comments:
>>
>> *The good*
>> +1. It appears to be compliant with version 2.0 of the Open Definition.
>>
>> *The less good*
>> This license is an extremely positive step forward when compared to
>> previous versions of the OGL UK, and the authors are to be thanked and
>> congratulated for their hard work. However, I feel the license still has
>> drafting issues that I feel I should raise for the record and to educate
>> future submitters to ODC. In particular, roughly from most important
>> down to "very much drafting nitpicks":
>>
>>  1. It retains a variety of jurisdiction-specific clauses that will
>>     inevitably result in a new flood of confusing, customized,
>>     likely-incompatible versions of the OGL.
>>  2. Modern open licenses (GPL v3, MPL v2, CC 4, etc.) have realized that
>>     automatic termination without an ability to remedy the termination
>>     can be problematic. It would be good if OGL remedied this. (The
>>     simplest version of the cure that I'm aware of is in copyleft-next,
>>     Sec. 7(a)
>>     <https://gitorious.org/copyleft-next/copyleft-next/source/3baab310f662811ba48d8a86bfe7f9ef7ef612dc:Drafts/copyleft-next>.)
> 
> Perhaps a question about termination and cure period should be added to
> the info requested with submissions at
> http://opendefinition.org/licenses/process/ in order to encourage
> submitters to encourage this.
> 
> I don't know if it is important enough to do so, but in addition to
> asking, could be made a requirement for being a "recommended" license;
> right now recommended includes as a requirement "generally considered
> best practice"; does automatic termination without cure put a license
> irredeemably outside of current best practice? This would mean moving
> ODbL 1.0 to "other" category.

I hit send while still intending to edit...would should be could above,
and I meant to refer to the comment in
http://spatiallaw.com/Uploads/ODbL_and_OpenStreetMap__Analysis_and_Use_Cases_.pdf
on this issue and noting I'm not sure I understand how ODbL's
reinstatement is deficient. Shouldn't have mentioned yet!

>>  3. The "About" section confusingly mixes legally non-impactful
>>     commentary/explanation with language that is presumably intended to
>>     be legally binding ("when the Information is adapted and licensed
>>     under either of those licenses...") These should be separated out.
>>  4. Is unnecessarily limited to public sector information ("Contains
>>     public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence
>>     v3.0.") which will be unnecessarily confusing when the database is
>>     adapted by combination with non-public-sector databases.
> 
> It does everything it can to avoid this -- explicitly stating that
> conditions are fulfilled when complying with CC-BY or ODC-BY -- use
> short of not existing. :) Or maybe you mean the default attribution
> line; I agree that will be kind of weird in some cases.
> 
>>  5. Does not number sections, which makes discussion of the license
>>     cumbersome (though the authors are otherwise to be quite applauded
>>     for the clarity of the drafting!)
>>
>> As a result of #1, I would strongly urge that OKFN/ODC should state that
>> usage of the license is disfavored unless absolutely necessary (e.g.,
>> where usage is required by statute) in favor of jurisdiction-neutral
>> licenses like CC 4.0.
> 
> It will go under "other" rather than "recommended" conformant licenses
> on http://opendefinition.org/licenses/
> 
> The comment there for UK OGL 2.0 is "Non-reusable. For use by UK
> government licensors; re-uses of OGL-UK-2.0 material may be released
> under CC-BY or ODC-BY. Note version 1.0 is not approved as conformant."
> I suspect the same will work for 3.0 when added, but stronger language
> would be OK with me. Some others in the other category would need the
> same language. Though the paragraph above the other table already has
> "strongly advised" to use a recommended license.
> 
> Re #1, I have a more general nitpick: I wish the versioning had been
> exploited as an opportunity to get other governments to converge on at
> least an OGL template (of course I'd rather they converged on a reusable
> OGL, or better yet converged on using CC-BY, or better yet CC0, or
> better yet on all PSI not subject to copy/database restrictions...but
> I'll accept tiny steps).
> 
> Mike
> 