[Geowanking] OGC Rights Management Summit

Dan Brickley danbri at danbri.org
Sun May 31 07:49:08 PDT 2009


On 31/5/09 11:41, SteveC wrote:
>
> On 31 May 2009, at 07:10, Marc Wick wrote:
>
>> There are fundamental differences between source code and data.
>> Share-alike code does not prevent you from building complex
>> applications, whereas share-alike data is a show stopper for anything
>> not absolutely trivial.
>>
>> "..., OSM doesn't even let you do mashups." [1]
>>
>> I understand that OdbL is trying to address and alleviate some of
>> these issues. Unfortunately I fear that I am not going to understand
>> 'kafkaesque' legalese and I prefer licenses that I can understand
>> without having to consult a lawyer. Maybe somebody wants to take the
>> opportunity and explain in a few words how OdbL is supposed to work?
>
> I said the process was kafkaesque, not the license itself. It always is,
> look at the GPLv3 process.
>
> The ODbL looks a bit like CC-BY-SA for data, except that if you make
> something with the data (say, a printed map) then that 'produced work'
> can be licensed however you like so long as you don't reverse engineer
> the data back from that.

Who is "you" in this last phrase? If I (Dan) make a lovely map, and 
publish PDF, GIF, JPEG and SVG versions of it online, that's OK? But if 
the SVG version had fancy smart markup in it such that it could be 
treated programmatically as geographic information, that would be 
problematic? Am I (Dan) discouraged from making such an 
accessibility-friendly version of my map available? Or are others simply 
discouraged from making certain forms of re-use of that data? (eg. tools 
for partially sighted users who might want non-visual map info...)

Dan




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