Public Domain Madness

God knows I have tried to rid the world of the evil that is the so-called "public domain". This is my project, folks, and contrary to what you may have read in the press, this project is not "license-free", and you cannot "do anything you want" with my the data.

I have hired a bunch of OSM ambassadors who now roam the States and generally do a good job of slowly moving us away from the original "public domain" TIGER data. Soon, my license will rule the world!

I'm a bit concerned about this Sunburned Surveyor guy though. First I thought I could let them do their own friggin' public domain whatever map and coordinate using a Yahoo list, but then one of my wisecrack Foundation directors pointed out that there's nothing in the statutes that says OSM is the only free map project we support so I had to give way there. (I made sure nobody will find them though, they're at "legal-general" - who would ever guess that that's the name for the PD talk list!) That much and not further, I thought, but meanwhile they seem to have got hosting from Telascience, and what frightens me most is that they actually managed to log in to their server! As if that was not enough, it seems that they have also uncovered my business secret of using relational databases to store, well, data. I should have got that patented when I started.

Speaking of patents, some lousy bastard told the legal-talk nitpickers that I was going to buy myself trademarks for OSM and the logo, and now I'm in trouble. I mean, we all know that the foundation must never get these trademarks, otherwise they could be carpetbagged by Evil Ed and suddenly CloudMade would not be allowed to say "OSM" without also favourably mentioning GMaps or so. But they don't understand that I'm only acting in their own best interest... just because Larry Sonsini is a pal of mine doesn't mean I'm going to pull a TWiki for god's sake!

I might have to hand over the trademarks to the foundation in the end. I tell you, sometimes it feels like I have a veritable palace revolution brewing there. I recently told them that I bloody well expect them to remain silent about foundation business in public, and what did they do? They promptly resolved that all foundation business was public unless explicitly declared secret. It felt like a slap in the face and I was about to climb the table and shout "who's the boss here" but then remembered that it was only a phone conference so I couldn't impress them with that. It'll have to wait.

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