[OSM-legal-talk] Názor a návrhy; Was: Critical Mass for license change-over - resent after subsription to the lists

[Pavel Pisa]

Excuse me for yet again resend, but legal list requires subscription
and I have not expected to have to deal with it in the past.
Some typos corrected and reasons clarified.

Hello Pavel,

On Saturday 31 March 2012 17:03:28 Pavel Machek wrote:
> Ahoj!
>
> > Zdravím Pavla a ostatní přispěvatele z Čech,
>
> (Sorry ze mi to tak dlouho trvalo).

thanks for reply, but I think, that affair is already lost
and damage caused to community data is inevitable

  Scheduled service notice: OpenStreetMap database
  will be in read-only mode from April 1st to April 4th

And I agree that you are not that who is to blame.

I am in bitter mood today, because the advocate
(Erik the Vicking) who contacted me (2011-02-15) with
supplicate for new license and terms confirmation, expressed
in his reply to my concerns that at least some of them
are legitimate and that he would report them to the
the OpenStreetMap Foundation board. Nothing has
happended since then.

I have signed the ODbL (I generally agree with reasons
for layers combination, commercial use and accumulation
of corrections under ODbL on layer basis) to choose smaller
damage when I could not more edit my data under original rems.
I am strongly against the way the Contribution Terms
has been forced to new contributors. This has been undemocratic
way how to over-vote existing contributors. I clicked to
allow my work to be used (or even abused) under these terms
only to minimize damage with frightened heart for open
OSM future.

If at least next CT terms changes are not codified,
then only good will of people in Cloudmade and other full time
and commercial users of data protects OSM again gaining
of full dominance of some evil entity with aim to tighten
single party lock on the data and abuse of the community.
And the way CT has been forced to us shows that this hope
for good will is quite weak.

There are changes in CT, I have asked for more than year ago.

The period of (at least) 3 months should be codified for first
suggestion of future license change and initial discussion.
Then period for vote should be at least 3 months.
(There are people who go for long journeys with GPS
or without and who do not have access or do not like
to be on-line during they expeditions and their contributions
could be extremely valuable for areas which are of my
biggest interrest).

I agree that data and community have bigger value than
infinite rights of single member and that some way to deal
with dead people's data and long time inactive members
is necessary. But the rules are quite tight when somebody
who is not 14-days on-line losing her/his rights even if she/he
contributed with great amount of work three years ago.
It is quite impolite (and even if she/he is only monitoring
work and not contributing last year).

Actual terms (paragraph 3) allows to start periodically
voting for new license and CT term without any limitations
and time guarantee. Terms defining a contributor (three months
in year) are favoring people with full time jobs on project
and those connected to related commercial activities.
So whole volunteers driven OSM project can change to
commercial one with paid fees for participation
or even into something worse. There are demanded
fees for some cloudmade "services". I.e. if you do not
to accept third party advertisements in your data
on mobile platform. I consider that allowed when
they invest to the infrastructure and that particular SW
is their company closed source offer but data and community
contributed SW has to be under community control and really
open licenses. But rules favors paid fulltimers and foundation
board to control project more easily and enforce policy to others
(which has been shown by way CT has been established) and that
is dangerous.

I have signed CC-BY-SA in ExtraLicensing to protect usability
of my (relatively small) contribution to the work to
be usable for alternative (may be even open community future
backup) projects.

  http://timsc.dev.openstreetmap.org/extralicenses/

But this information is not propagated to main OSM
database and not seen in JOSM. Compared to CT terms
agreement shown and promoted everywhere.

I still consider next way to balance profit of both
ODbL proponents and people who cannot agree with CT
(like Pavel Machek is) or ODbL tied future as the
best solution.

OSM foundation should offer (by e-mail) to all members possibility
to confirm agreement with use of their future contributions
even under CC-BY-SA and maintain displaying of CC-BY-SA compatible
data marks in main OSM database. This step should help people
from alternative non-ODbL project and they could (in return)
help ODbL group by allowing their already included data to be
used under ODbL.

Any way, I consider all this unfortunate and I thing that
there is more problem on side of the foundation proponents
and Cloudmade commercial entrepreneurs than on the side
of volunteer contributors who did not agree with terms
change.

With hope for constructive and open future,

                Pavel Pisa
    e-mail:     pisa at cmp.felk.cvut.cz
    www:        http://cmp.felk.cvut.cz/~pisa
    university: http://dce.fel.cvut.cz/
-- 
Yours sincerely
                Pavel Pisa

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