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I always get a little irritated, perhaps irrationally so, when I find another "open" project that uses a new or obscure content licensing scheme. In this case,
by basilgohar 7y ago
I always get a little irritated, perhaps irrationally so, when I find another "open" project that uses a new or obscure content licensing scheme. In this case, they are using ones from the "Open Database" family, of which I am not familiar.
Can someone clarify what, if any, advantages for consumers/users this has over one of the Creative Commons content licenses? If there is a code aspect to it, then please similarly explain the advantage it has over one of the BSD, MIT, Apache, or A/GPL-compatible licenses.
License proliferation has been a real pain of late (past few years) and has muddied the waters significantly whereas many of these above-mentioned ones have largely stood the test of time and already serve a huge swath of the content world.
- rathel 7y agoIn 2012 OpenStreetMap switched from CC-BY-SA to Open Database Licence. I think the most important is the provision that "produced works" need only to attribute the authors, and if you don't modify the source database then the license is non-viral.
- nathcd 7y agoA summary of the reason for their change is here: https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Historic/We_Are_Changing_The_License https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Historic/We_Are_... Also worth noting is that OSM was on CC-BY-SA version 2 prior to the change. If I'm remembering correctly, version 3 or 4 of the CC licenses made it more amenable to databases, but I'll have to do a little more digging to see if my memory is serving me correctly...
- rhn_mk1 7y agoDatabases are not always copyrightable, depending on the jurisdiction. There's a better explanation than I could possibly give here: https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Historic/We_Are_Changing_The_License#What_are_the_main_differences_between_the_old_and_the_new_license.3F https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Historic/We_Are_...