[Geojson] Outstanding Issues?

Allan Doyle afdoyle at MIT.EDU
Mon Oct 22 04:40:22 PDT 2007


On Oct 21, 2007, at 23:33 , Raj Singh wrote:

>  From my understanding of this OGC license (which is pretty good,
> since I've talked it to death with staff this year, but I'm no
> lawyer, etc...), all this says is do whatever you want but keep the
> OGC copyright on it.
>
> Now from my understanding of Creative Commons licenses, they have one
> that basically says the same thing--attribution (<http://
> creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/>). This leads to two questions:
>
> 1. Is the big deal with CC that you don't have to read a long
> statement because the icon(s) will tell you what you can do, and re-
> using a "standard" license means there can be nothing hidden in it?

The big deal is that once you've learned what the license is by  
reading it, having your lawyers read it, etc. you don't have to do it  
again. Do you know why that is? Because it's a standard!

>
> 2. Would adoption of a standard CC license increase the number of
> readers of OGC documents?

The answer would seem to be 'yes'. But that's not the point. It would  
help this group and it would help other license-aware FOSS people.  
Most people probably don't read what they are clicking.

>
> ---
> Raj (OGC staffer)
>
>
> On Oct 19, 2007, at 10:02 PM, Allan Doyle wrote:
>
>> In re-reading the click-through license, it says:
>>
>> "Permission is hereby granted, free of charge and subject to the
>> terms set forth below, to any person obtaining a copy of this
>> Intellectual Property and any associated documentation, to deal in
>> the Intellectual Property without restriction (except as set forth
>> below), including without limitation the rights to implement, use,
>> copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, and/or sublicense copies of
>> the Intellectual Property, and to permit persons to whom the
>> Intellectual Property is furnished to do so, provided that all
>> copyright notices on the intellectual property are retained intact  
>> and
>>

Read the next bit, over and over. It's just not clear. It's like one  
of those 3-d line-drawings of a cube. First one side is towards you,  
then the other.

>>    that each person to whom the Intellectual Property
>>    is furnished agrees to the terms of this Agreement."

'each person to whom ... is furnished' - does that mean me, the  
current reader, or does that mean the 'downstream' reader of my copy?

The sense is very different. Either I'm the one who agrees, or I'm  
the one who has to get the next person to agree.

That's why the cc license is good. It's already written, debugged,  
and out there.

	Allan


>>
>> So, I'm not touching this. I vote we leave the link to the OGC spec
>> out of the GeoJSON document. If OGC wants their specs to be read and
>> used, maybe they will someday come to their senses and deal with this
>> issue.
>>
>> 	Allan
>>
>>
>> On Oct 19, 2007, at 11:21 , Jason Birch wrote:
>>
>>> Works for me :)
>>>
>>> Jason
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Allan Doyle
>>> Subject: Re: [Geojson] Outstanding Issues?
>>>
>>> I'm game to follow those directions and post a version of that
>>> spec on
>>> the GeoJSON website. That way we lose the click-through and are
>>> good to
>>> go. We can link to our local copy.
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Geojson mailing list
>>> Geojson at lists.geojson.org
>>> http://lists.geojson.org/listinfo.cgi/geojson-geojson.org
>>
>> -- 
>> Allan Doyle
>> Director of Technology
>> MIT Museum
>> +1.617.452.2111
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Geojson mailing list
>> Geojson at lists.geojson.org
>> http://lists.geojson.org/listinfo.cgi/geojson-geojson.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Geojson mailing list
> Geojson at lists.geojson.org
> http://lists.geojson.org/listinfo.cgi/geojson-geojson.org

-- 
Allan Doyle
Director of Technology
MIT Museum
+1.617.452.2111




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