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

[Tom Hughes]

Peter Miller wrote:

> 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.

Isn't that more or less what we've been doing, interminably, for the 
last umpteen years? At some point we need to stop talking and start 
doing you know...

That said, it seems unlikely to me that we'll be in a position to start 
the technical process of seeking people's approval before Christmas. Get 
the text out maybe, and start the process of seeking approval in the new 
year or something.

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

I don't see any reason to delay this - if nothing else it would let 
people know that your debate is going on and that people can come and 
join in. If you just use the mailing lists then you'll only be reaching 
a fraction of one percent of the community. To reach the vast majority a 
direct email is probably the only option.

> 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?

Haven't you already seen a draft and tested it against your use cases 
and commented though? Isn't that where we're at now, that they are 
considering your feedback? How many cycles of this do you think we 
should go through? Until you have no complaints? Until nobody has any 
complaints? Until the heat death of the Universe?

Tom

-- 
Tom Hughes (tom at compton.nu)
http://www.compton.nu/