[odc-discuss] Open Government Licence interoperable with ODC - Attribution

Jordan S Hatcher jordan at opencontentlawyer.com
Wed Oct 6 07:52:20 UTC 2010


Hi MJ

On 5 Oct 2010, at 00:11, MJ Ray wrote:

> Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemeD.net> wrote:
>> Jordan S Hatcher wrote:
>>> "These terms have been aligned to be interoperable with any Creative
>>> Commons Attribution Licence, which covers copyright, and Open Data
>>> Commons Attribution License, which covers database rights and
>>> applicable copyrights."
>>> 
>>> This is really great news!
>> 
>> Definitely. [...]
> 
> Well, maybe.  Does anyone know if the other groups agree?  The
> restrictions on field of use in the OGL vex me, as they look
> incompatible with FOSS and some share-alike terms.

On fields of use/endeavour, which portions were you thinking about?

I'm still thinking through this but so far I don't see any problems.

Generally I think that the OGL does two things:

-- acts like most public licenses (CC, ODC, GPL, etc) by providing a generic licensing framework
-- unlike most (if not all?) public licenses, also describes what is not covered by the generic licensing framework (such as logos, crests, personal data)

Some of the other restrictions are more the type you'd get from a separate trademark policy related to a FOSS project (I'd put the no endorsement language here), which don't defeat FOSS compatibility as effectively it relates to something that is not FOSS licensed (the code versus trademark distinction in FOSS).

Some restrictions, such as complying with the Data Protection Act and the e-privacy directive are the law anyway and would seem to restrict users regardless of whether the OGL reminded you of your obligations here.  Similarly, CC licenses don't license personality rights or give clearance to any applicable privacy rights.

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/>





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