[odc-discuss] (no subject)

Fri Mar 27 20:52:33 UTC 2015

2015-03-27 20:35 GMT+00:00 Andrew Rens <andrewrens at gmail.com>:

> Francis you are far from obtuse - my email was unintentionally misleading.
>
> My apologies, I cut and paste from another email badly.
>
> What I wanted to ask was this:
>
> The legal text ofODC-By 1.0
> http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/
>
> reads:
>
> "4.2 Notices. If You Publicly Convey this Database, any Derivative
> Database, or the Database as part of a Collective Database, then You must:
>
> a. Do so only under the terms of this License".
>
> In other words users of By can only use By downstream. This is unlike CC
> By in which users can use other licences downstream.
>
Just to be clear here - 4.2 is a condition of use imposed on the licensee
under the licence.

If A licences a database under ODC-By, and B wishes to publicly convey it,
then B must adhere to the terms of ODC-By in so doing.

Most specifically, B does not ever license the database themselves (see
4.4) there is no sublicensing going on. So to say "... can only use By
downstream" could be confusing. There is no "downstream". There is only the
original ODC-By licence from A offered to B and to users of B.

If (for example) B creates a derivative database then B can license that
database under any licence they like. However if that database contains
database IP belonging to A then any user of the derived database will need
a licence from A to use it as well. That's OK because under 4.4 A licenses
to them under ODC-By.

> The legal text of the OBdL 1.0
>
> http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1.0/
>
> reads
>
> 4.2 Notices. If You Publicly Convey this Database, any Derivative
> Database, or the Database as part of a Collective Database, then You must:
>
>  a. Do so only under the terms of this License or another license
> permitted under Section 4.4;"
>
> The text of both require the re-licensing under the originating licence.
> ODbL gives some flexibility in 4.4 so is more flexible than By.
>
> What am I missing?
>
While the By licence did not try to constrain what a licensee did with
Derived Databases etc, the ODbL does. A licensee is constrained to use one
of a set of licenses (see 4.4) to license their material. These licences
genuinely are what you called "downstream".

So, in our original example, suppose A licenses a database under the ODbL.
B uses it to create a derived database. B must now license that database
under a licence compatible with 4.4. Let us say it is a hypothetical SUPER
licence as yet to be invented in 2020 but compatible with ODbL. B licenses
their derived database under SUPER.

But, just as before, that derived database will probably (though not
certainly) contain IP belonging to A. Any of B's licensees will need a
licence from A.

Now if we used the 4.2 from By, then A would be saying to everyone: you can
use my IP in derived databases but only under ODC-By. That would be odd if
B had licensed under some other licence (eg the SUPER licence). So what 4.2
in ODC-ODbL is saying is that you can comply with another licence that is
compatible with ODbL - making a situation like this more logical.

In short: By has no "downstream" licensing, ODbL does. Hence the latter
requires a flexibility the former does not.

-- 
Francis Davey
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