[Fedora-legal-list] Openstreetmap moving to Open Database License (ODbL)

[Andrea Musuruane]

On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 6:04 PM, Tom spot Callaway <tcallawa at redhat.com> wrote:
> Looking at the Factual Information License, I've got some concerns. I
> asked Red Hat Legal to take a look at it, and this was their reply:
>
>        I think the problem with this one is that the definition of "Use"
> introduces some
>        fundamental uncertainty.  If it really means "any act that is
> restricted by copyright", and
>        this license does seem to be trying to be a copyright license, then
> there ought to be no
>        problem, since "Use" should encompass any act of modification that is
> restricted by
>        applicable copyright -- e.g. rights to create derivative works under
> U.S. copyright law.
>        However, then they bother to say "modifying the Work as may be
> technically necessary
>        to use it in a different mode or format".  That sounds like they might
> be implying that
>        broader acts of modification are not within the scope of "Use", despite
> the apparent
>        reach of the first part of the definition.  And if "Use" does indeed
> encompass only a
>        proper subset of copyright-law modification acts, then it would be
> non-free. While in
>        general that wouldn't necessarily be true, but here the narrow
> interpretation suggests it
>        is non-free because the apparently-granted modification rights are too
> limited.
>
> In addition, I'm concerned that there does not appear to be any explicit
> grant of permission to redistribute content under the Factual
> Information License without restriction.
>
> (RH Legal is still looking at the ODBL, they should have comments on
> that later, which I will pass along).

I sent these remarks to the ODC-discuss ML. They have just posted this in reply:
http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/odc-discuss/2009-March/000066.html

They are asking for clarifications.

Regards.

Bye,

Andrea.