[OSM-legal-talk] OSM Foundation / Domains / Trademark

[Peter Miller]

For people's information the January08 and October08 minutes are now
available on line so we now (finally) have a complete set of the monthly
meetings available; thank you Andy.

People should note that only the Jan08 and Oct08 minutes are searchable. The
other minutes up to Sept08 are still not searchable for some reason.

Also that the November Minutes are on line but can't be reached from list on
the foundation website but can only be reached using the link supplied by
Andy on his recent post for some reason. I guess these glitches will get
sorted out soon.

The domain names are going to be transferred which is good. The UK trademark
application evidently failed and the others will be transferred which is ok.
I guess we will be provided with an updated on that as it develops.

There are a number of issues within the recently published minutes that we
should probably talk about at some point, but the big surprise and most
urgent one from my perspective is that it is still planned that we release
the new licence 'before Xmas' even though there is not a clear 'home' for it
and none of us have seen it for months and that we only have 4 weeks left!

It is encouraging to see that Steve is reviewing the licence on a 'use-case
by use-case basis' but in my mind there are still some thorny issues which
have not been bottomed-out in relation to these use cases. In an earlier
post I note that Steve indicated that not all use-cases would be
accommodated which was concerning a well. I have tried to raise some of
these 'thorny issues' with the foundation (and on this list) without a
response from the foundation.

I notice that other directors are described as being 'perplexed' and
'concerned' in the minutes on this subject. Is enough consultation happening
on this or are we heading for trouble? My worst fear is that the a licence
does indeed get released on the 25th Dec, but that there are real problems
with it, or perceived problems with it and it just creates a big stink on
the lists and that as a result many users hold back from agreeing to it and
then where do we go.

My big message to the foundation, is *slow down* and take the time that is
needed to *get people on side*. We only get one crack at this one and if we
fail on a big email request to 20K+ people we won't get another chance and
we will be left in limbo with some accepting the new licence, some refusing
and thereby sticking with CCBYSA and some heading for PD!

Personally I am a strong advocate for a more organic and careful process
where the next draft is discussed first on legal-talk then on talk and on
the national lists (usa, italy, germany, japan etc) and that we look to get
sign-up and support by the major contributors on the main lists and in each
country before going to the wider audience.

Once we have these people on board then we get them to do outreach to the
other contributors in their communities; we let them sell it to the others
in their groups one-by-one in their own language and in their own culture. I
will certainly be active in the East of England and in other areas where I
have taken an active role and I am sure others will be in their own
constituencies as well.

While this is going on anyone who signs up as a new user will have to agree
to the new licence as well as the current one.

The Foundation then, finally, and as a last resort, does a mass email
release to reach the remainder. 

ITO is again going to clearly request that the foundation lets us see and
comment on the new draft of the licence prior to its release. We want to
validate the licence against our key use-cases that matter to us and I
suggest that others do the same; that seems only fair. Personally I would
like to see a wide range of other commercial users doing the same and using
their lawyers to test the licence against their key use-cases to ensure that
they are happy with the licence and that it is sound. Multimap? Flickr?
Google? CloudMade? Geofabrik?

The message to the foundation is again to *slow down* and don't try to push
this through without getting buy-in first because it just won't work.

Regards,



Peter

> -----Original Message-----
> From: legal-talk-bounces at openstreetmap.org [mailto:legal-talk- 
> bounces at openstreetmap.org] On Behalf Of Andy Robinson 
> (blackadder-lists)
> Sent: 01 December 2008 12:21
> To: 'Licensing and other legal discussions.'
> Subject: [Spam] Re: [OSM-legal-talk] OSM Foundation / Domains / 
> Trademark
> 
> Mike had put the link up before I'd published the doc. You should be 
> able to reach it now. Let me know if not.
> 
> http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dcs6phhk_35dkhtq2dj
> 
> Patience please on the other Jan & Oct ones, they will be up later today.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Andy
>