OpenStreetMap
No option to mark future contributions available under old and new license?
Posted by wallclimber21 on 19 April 2011 in English.Frankly, I don't give a flying F about the license of my edits, as long as anyone can use them.
(I DO care about the fact that a lot of existing data from others may be removed in the future, which is by itself reason enough to consider a license change plain dumb.)
I know there was an option to grant your contributions public domain status, which I selected, but that was no more than a poll. What was missing was an option to explicitly license contributions under both new and old license.
This way, in case of an OSM fork, my new edits can still be used for both.
Discussion
Comment from Richard on 19 April 2011 at 05:50
Saying that your contributions are PD is more than just a poll. I can't see any circumstances in which OSMF would be dumb enough to sue someone for using data which has been explicitly declared by the data's creator to be public domain.
Comment from wallclimber21 on 19 April 2011 at 06:01
Well, they were dumb enough to change the license and antagonize a whole lot of people for very little benefit (at best).
Also, on one hand, they're changing the license for relatively obscure reasons, but on the other hand we just have to assume that all will be ok? That's not exactly a consequent position, don't you think?
Comment from Richard on 19 April 2011 at 06:03
No, I don't think it's being done for obscure reasons, I think it's being done for good reasons.
As for "just have to assume" - of course you don't. It's a community project. You can help.
Comment from netman55 on 19 April 2011 at 08:11
"in case of an OSM fork"
There is already a number of OSM forks in various stages of development which I come across while considering whether to continue contributing to OSM
Comment from Vincent de Phily on 19 April 2011 at 15:42
Also, any fork will have the backup of all deleted CC-BY-SA data available "as long as possible". So the old data will still be available, should anybody feel that it is worth the trouble to create a dual-licensed db.