[odc-discuss] ODbL -> BY-SA -> ?

[Jordan S Hatcher]

On 20 Aug 2010, at 12:29, Rob Myers wrote:

>> I see the data layer as being potentially different from the rest of what is being licensed CC-BY-SA in a "produced work" (which I explained in my earlier email).
>> 
>> Users of CC-BY-SA licensed material using a "produced work" from an ODbL database would be aware of the ODbL data layer because of the notice provision in 4.3.
> 
> Is it the case that the BY-SA would apply to the *contents* of the Database and the ODbL to the Database? Or is there a conceivable problem but this scenario is vanishingly unlikely in real life? Or have I misunderstood something?

Not quite sure I understand but maybe this will help:

1.  Licensing of the contents of a database.  There are two ways to approach the contents.  The first question to ask is:

Are the IP rights covering the contents homogenous or heterogeneous?   In other words, can one license apply across all the contents or is it multiple licenses?

Keep in mind that the contents can be anything.  So Flickr photos under a range of licenses could be inside a database, same as a huge lump of public domain factual data could be the entire dataset.

So lets take factual data, under one license (say the DbC, which is pretty liberal (see especially 2.4) <http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/dbcl/1-0/> as the contents under an ODbL database.

You've run a query and out spits some of this factual data.  You then use it to make a really neat visualisation of that data, which you then CC-BY or CC-BY-SA license (or even use a proprietary license!).  In my opinion, all the originality that goes into creating the visualisation is what you're licensing here, not the data underneath it all. Your visualisation isn't a database, it's a pretty picture that says something meaningful about the numbers, and the CC-BY-SA license covers the your pretty picture.

HTH

Thanks!

~Jordan


____
Mr. Jordan S Hatcher, JD, LLM

More at: <http://www.jordanhatcher.com>
Co-founder:  <http://www.opendatacommons.org>
Open Knowledge: <http://www.okfn.org/>