New license status

[Mike Collinson]

Here is a quick report from the License Working Group as we have been rather quiet.

Since the proposal we made to the OSMF board in August and at SOTM 2009, we have been working on a number of small issues raised but now getting on track to make our final formal license change proposal to OSMF members.

- We now have a simple human-readable summary of the ODbL initiated by us and hosted at http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/summary/

- A very much re-worked Contributor Terms is now virtually complete and you can see a snapshot at http://docs.google.com/View?id=dd9g3qjp_1kqzg8dhr. Any comments or discussion welcome.

- We believe we are now on the final countdown to presenting a formal proposal to OSMF members.  This will be based on a slight re-work of this document presented to the Sept 15th board meeting: http://docs.google.com/View?id=dd9g3qjp_2mp8f5shj

- While OSMF members study the proposal, we are also circulating it to a number of legal luminaries in the Open Intellectional Property community as a courtesy and for any comments they might makes, especially as to interaction with other projects that are or make use of open creative works and open software.

- The OSMF board will meet next Oct 13th. This will be the first opportunity to consider when a member vote should occur.

Mike


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[Rahkonen Jukka]

Mike Collinson <mike@...> writes:

>
> Here is a quick report from the License Working Group as we have been rather
quiet.Since the proposal we made to the OSMF board in August and at SOTM 2009,
we have been working on a number of small issues raised but now getting on track
to make our final formal license change proposal to OSMF members.- We now have a
simple human-readable summary of the ODbL initiated by us and hosted at
http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/summary/

My human eyes can't make out how long time ODbL will protect the contents of
database.  Is it the same as in EU database directive "Directive 96/9/EC of the
European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection
of databases" which says:
Article 10
Term of protection
1. The right provided for in Article 7 shall run from the date of completion of
the making of the database. It shall expire fifteen years from the first of
January of the year following the date of completion.

Will all contents of OSM year 2009 database be in public domain first of
January, 2025?


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[Martin Koppenhoefer]

2009/9/28 Jukka Rahkonen <jukka.rahkonen@...>:
> Mike Collinson <mike@...> writes:

> Article 10
> Term of protection
> 1. The right provided for in Article 7 shall run from the date of completion of
> the making of the database. It shall expire fifteen years from the first of
> January of the year following the date of completion.
>
> Will all contents of OSM year 2009 database be in public domain first of
> January, 2025?

I doubt that OSM db will ever be "completed" ;-)

cheers,
Martin

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[Gustav Foseid-2]

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 12:46 PM, Jukka Rahkonen <jukka.rahkonen@...> wrote:

Will all contents of OSM year 2009 database be in public domain first of
January, 2025?

The database directive gives 15 years of protection for a dump of a database. As long as the database is updated, the protection period will be continously renewed.

 - Gustav

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[Iván Sánchez Ortega-3]

El Lunes, 28 de Septiembre de 2009, Gustav Foseid escribió:
> On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 12:46 PM, Jukka Rahkonen
>
> <jukka.rahkonen@...>wrote:
> > Will all contents of OSM year 2009 database be in public domain first of
> > January, 2025?
>
> The database directive gives 15 years of protection for a dump of a
> database. As long as the database is updated, the protection period will be
> continously renewed.

Planet dumps which are 15 years old will be considered out-of-copyright,
though.


--
----------------------------------
Iván Sánchez Ortega <ivan@...>

http://ivan.sanchezortega.es
MSN:i_eat_s_p_a_m_for_breakfast@...
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IRC: ivansanchez @ OFTC & freenode

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[Gustav Foseid-2]

2009/9/28 Iván Sánchez Ortega <ivan@...>

> The database directive gives 15 years of protection for a dump of a
> database. As long as the database is updated, the protection period will be
> continously renewed.

Planet dumps which are 15 years old will be considered out-of-copyright,
though.

Well... There is no copyright that expires after 15 years. Sui generis database rights expire after 15 years, but copyright is hardly very relevant for an OpenStreetMap database dump.

 - Gustav

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[Iván Sánchez Ortega-3]

El Lunes, 28 de Septiembre de 2009, Gustav Foseid escribió:

> 2009/9/28 Iván Sánchez Ortega <ivan@...>
>
> > > The database directive gives 15 years of protection for a dump of a
> > > database. As long as the database is updated, the protection period
> > > will
> >
> > be
> >
> > > continously renewed.
> >
> > Planet dumps which are 15 years old will be considered out-of-copyright,
> > though.
>
> Well... There is no copyright that expires after 15 years. Sui generis
> database rights expire after 15 years, but copyright is hardly very
> relevant for an OpenStreetMap database dump.

OK,let me rephrase that:

"Planet dumps which are 15 years old will be considered
out-of-sui-generis-database-rights, though."

Better? :-)

--
----------------------------------
Iván Sánchez Ortega <ivan@...>

"Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other
alternatives."
 - Abba Eban (1915-2002)


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[Gustav Foseid-2]

2009/9/28 Iván Sánchez Ortega <ivan@...>

Better? :-)

:-)

 - Gustav

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[Martin Koppenhoefer]

2009/9/28 Gustav Foseid <gustavf@...>:
> 2009/9/28 Iván Sánchez Ortega <ivan@...>
>>
>> Better? :-)
>
> :-)
>

does this mean yes? What is the situation with planned Odbl?

cheers,
Martin

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[Matt Amos-3]

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 2:40 PM, Martin Koppenhoefer
<dieterdreist@...> wrote:
> 2009/9/28 Gustav Foseid <gustavf@...>:
>> 2009/9/28 Iván Sánchez Ortega <ivan@...>
>>>
>>> Better? :-)
>>
>> :-)
>>
>
> does this mean yes? What is the situation with planned Odbl?

that 15-year term is with ODbL. with CC BY-SA it's arguable whether
the dumps are protected at all.

cheers,

matt

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[James Livingston-2]

On 28/09/2009, at 11:16 PM, Gustav Foseid wrote:
> Well... There is no copyright that expires after 15 years. Sui  
> generis database rights expire after 15 years, but copyright is  
> hardly very relevant for an OpenStreetMap database dump.

In Europe maybe - however there are countries where database do have  
inherent copyright separate from the copyright over their contents,  
for example in Australia. I think the copyright wouldn't expire for 70  
years here, which is definitely more than the 15 for European sui  
generis database rights.

I see the qualification that "substantial" is in terms of quality,  
quantity or a combination of both - but out of interest, is it  
supposed to mean basically what it means in terms of the underlying  
copyright/database rights?

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[Matt Amos-3]

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 2:04 PM, James Livingston <doctau@...> wrote:

> On 28/09/2009, at 11:16 PM, Gustav Foseid wrote:
>> Well... There is no copyright that expires after 15 years. Sui
>> generis database rights expire after 15 years, but copyright is
>> hardly very relevant for an OpenStreetMap database dump.
>
> In Europe maybe - however there are countries where database do have
> inherent copyright separate from the copyright over their contents,
> for example in Australia. I think the copyright wouldn't expire for 70
> years here, which is definitely more than the 15 for European sui
> generis database rights.
>
> I see the qualification that "substantial" is in terms of quality,
> quantity or a combination of both - but out of interest, is it
> supposed to mean basically what it means in terms of the underlying
> copyright/database rights?

yes. but since there hasn't been any case law on what substantial
means (at least in europe, yet), we were advised to create
"guidelines" on what we, as a community, consider substantial.
apparently this would likely be taken into account, in the absence of
case law, if anything goes in front of a judge.

cheers,

matt

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[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

James Livingston wrote:

> On 28/09/2009, at 11:16 PM, Gustav Foseid wrote:
>> Well... There is no copyright that expires after 15 years. Sui  
>> generis database rights expire after 15 years, but copyright is  
>> hardly very relevant for an OpenStreetMap database dump.
>
> In Europe maybe - however there are countries where database do have  
> inherent copyright separate from the copyright over their contents,  
> for example in Australia. I think the copyright wouldn't expire for 70  
> years here, which is definitely more than the 15 for European sui  
> generis database rights.

I think we should try very hard to make conditions the same for all OSM
users on the planet, as far as possible. If what you say is true then we
should make sure (via the content license) that the content is not
protected longer in Australia than anywhere else.

Personally, as I am opposed to us trying to dictate to our users what
they may and may not do with our data, I would appreciate to see OSM
data go out of copyright as quickly as possible. (I once tried to talk
our share-alike hardliners into accepting one year, on the grounds of
one-year-old OSM data being practically useless... but they wouldn't
have it.)

Bye
Frederik

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[Matt Amos-3]

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 4:09 PM, Frederik Ramm <frederik@...> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> James Livingston wrote:
>> On 28/09/2009, at 11:16 PM, Gustav Foseid wrote:
>>> Well... There is no copyright that expires after 15 years. Sui
>>> generis database rights expire after 15 years, but copyright is
>>> hardly very relevant for an OpenStreetMap database dump.
>>
>> In Europe maybe - however there are countries where database do have
>> inherent copyright separate from the copyright over their contents,
>> for example in Australia. I think the copyright wouldn't expire for 70
>> years here, which is definitely more than the 15 for European sui
>> generis database rights.
>
> I think we should try very hard to make conditions the same for all OSM
> users on the planet, as far as possible. If what you say is true then we
> should make sure (via the content license) that the content is not
> protected longer in Australia than anywhere else.

interesting. we should make sure that ODC are aware of this for the
next version of ODbL. (note that the contents license != database
license, though. individual contents and "substantial extracts" of the
database are licensed separately).

> Personally, as I am opposed to us trying to dictate to our users what
> they may and may not do with our data, I would appreciate to see OSM
> data go out of copyright as quickly as possible. (I once tried to talk
> our share-alike hardliners into accepting one year, on the grounds of
> one-year-old OSM data being practically useless... but they wouldn't
> have it.)

hi, i'm matt and i'm a PD heretic ;-)

cheers,

matt

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[James Livingston-2]

On 30/09/2009, at 1:00 AM, Matt Amos wrote:
> yes. but since there hasn't been any case law on what substantial
> means (at least in europe, yet)

The reason I asked was because we had decision (Nine Network vs IceTV)  
from our High Court a few months ago, regarding the meaning of  
"substantial" when applied to database copyright. Not that it means  
anything in the rest of the world, especially since you have sui  
generis database rights instead in Europe, but it is interesting to  
see how things differ across the globe.

In this case a network produce a TV guide and someone reproduced the  
show name and time data from it. From my understanding, it was found  
that it wasn't substantial because the facts aren't copyrightable by  
themselves, and they hadn't reproduced a substantial part of the  
database schema or other things that are a copyrightable part of the  
database.


> we were advised to create
> "guidelines" on what we, as a community, consider substantial.
> apparently this would likely be taken into account, in the absence of
> case law, if anything goes in front of a judge.

Sounds pretty sensible, especially since "substantial" varies  
depending on whether it's in reference to copyright on the contents of  
the database, copyright on the database, sui generis database rights,  
as well as depending on jurisdiction. If you're somewhere that only  
the contract part is effective, then I assume it and case law would be  
all that there is to go on.

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[James Livingston-2]

On 26/09/2009, at 3:02 AM, Mike Collinson wrote:
> - A very much re-worked Contributor Terms is now virtually complete  
> and you can see a snapshot at http://docs.google.com/View?id=dd9g3qjp_1kqzg8dhr 
> .

Something I just thought of that would probably be worth talking about  
- how does the "active contributor" for voting, and other things, work  
if (unfortunately) the project forks?


 > the geo-database of the OpenStreetMap project (the “Project”)
...
 > or another free and open license; which other free and open license  
is chosen by a vote of the
 > OSMF membership [MJC3] and approved by a vote of active contributors.
...
 > An "active contributor" is defined as:
 >
 > a contributor (whether using a single or multiple accounts) that  
has edited the Project in any 3
 > calendar months from the last 6 months (i.e. there is a  
demonstrated interest over time,); and
 > has maintained a valid email address in their registration profile  
and responds within 3 weeks.

Two situations to think about:

1) Some time after a relicense to ODbL, there is a big argument and  
20% of the mappers go off to form FreeStreeMap, based on a fork of the  
database.
        (question) does the OSFM membership retain it's voting power over a  
re-license for all derivative databases?

A while later (> 3 months) OSM decides to relicense the db, perhaps to  
ODbL 2.0.
        (question) what exactly defines _the_ geo-database of the the Project?
        (question) and following that, if someone was contributing to OSM  
before the fork and FSM after it, do they get a vote on the re-license?


2) Some time after a re-license to ODbL, someone creates a derivative  
database called EvilStreetMap. They continue to release the data in  
accordance with the ODbL, but do not accept any outside contributors.
        (question) after waiting three months, who has voting rights over a  
re-license of EvilStreetMap?
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[Ulf Möller-3]

James Livingston schrieb:

> Something I just thought of that would probably be worth talking about  
> - how does the "active contributor" for voting, and other things, work  
> if (unfortunately) the project forks?

The forked project would be able to use the regular ODbL upgrade path (a
"later version" of the ODbL or a "compatible license"), but not to vote
for a different license.

This is similar to the situation with other open projects, for example
the FSF could introduce new licenses for their projects, but forked
projects have to work under the conditions of the GPL.

> (question) does the OSFM membership retain it's voting power over a  
> re-license for all derivative databases?

Only on the OSM database. The OSMF can't change the license on
modifications by people who have no relation with it.

> A while later (> 3 months) OSM decides to relicense the db, perhaps to  
> ODbL 2.0.
> (question) what exactly defines _the_ geo-database of the the Project?
> (question) and following that, if someone was contributing to OSM  
> before the fork and FSM after it, do they get a vote on the re-license?

In my understanding they don't. This is an asymmetry, but I don't see
any manageable way around it if we want to be able to change to a
different license later. (And the ODbL is new and we'd be the first
project to try it out, so I think we need a chance to switch to a
different license in case anything goes wrong or some other future
license turns out to be better.)

> 2) Some time after a re-license to ODbL, someone creates a derivative  
> database called EvilStreetMap. They continue to release the data in  
> accordance with the ODbL, but do not accept any outside contributors.
> (question) after waiting three months, who has voting rights over a  
> re-license of EvilStreetMap?

They can decide what to do with their modifications, but the OSM
contributors have the right to vote on the licenses for the original
database.


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[James Livingston-2]

On 03/10/2009, at 7:30 PM, Ulf Möller wrote:
> [re: people contributing to a fork]
>
> In my understanding they don't. This is an asymmetry, but I don't see
> any manageable way around it if we want to be able to change to a
> different license later. (And the ODbL is new and we'd be the first
> project to try it out, so I think we need a chance to switch to a
> different license in case anything goes wrong or some other future
> license turns out to be better.)
>>

> [re: EvilStreetMap not accepting contributions]
>
> They can decide what to do with their modifications, but the OSM
> contributors have the right to vote on the licenses for the original
> database.

That's pretty much what I expected, that active contributors to the  
main database could prevent the relicensing of a derivative database,  
but people who were formerly contributors to the main database and now  
contributing to the derivative one couldn't prevent relicensing of the  
main database.

As you said, we probably can't get away from the asymmetry between two  
and still be able to relicense without requiring everyone's permission  
again. As long as a fork doesn't get to the point of arguing over who  
gets to be The Project, with it's special database contributors.


Thank for verifying what I thought it meant.
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