[odc-discuss] Concerns about the ODBL preventing copying cost recovery

Fri Aug 20 13:58:54 UTC 2010

On 08/20/2010 02:06 PM, MJ Ray wrote:
>
> that interpretation of "free of charge" would mean that ODbL is
> effectively a "Non-Commercial" licence in some fields of endeavour and

No it wouldn't. You can charge for Produced Works and you can charge for 
physical media.

What it *might* mean is that this could be burdernsome. If it is 
burdensome enough, this could impact freedom enough to make the licence 
non-free in cases where this is a problem.

However if you believe it's OK to charge for receipt of the data, and 
that a "fee" need not paid be in cash, I don't see how paying for the 
data in bandwidth is a problem. And remember that the database is the 
source code to the Produced Work's object code in program terms. The MPL 
doesn't mention charging for code at all and the GPL v3 has 
circumstances under which you cannot charge for source. Both are DFSG-free.

- Rob.