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

Peter Miller peter.miller at itoworld.com
Tue Dec 2 10:24:36 GMT 2008


> -----Original Message-----
> From: legal-talk-bounces at openstreetmap.org [mailto:legal-talk-
> bounces at openstreetmap.org] On Behalf Of Tom Hughes
> Sent: 02 December 2008 08:55
> To: Licensing and other legal discussions.
> Subject: [Spam] Re: [OSM-legal-talk] OSM Foundation / Domains / Trademark
> 
> 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...
>

No, we have been fiddling and delaying without a clear process or focus or
timelines. I fear that we have now replaced this with on person rushing
something through in a hurry.
 
> 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.
> 

So where is the project plan and why is Steve saying it will be out by Xmas
then?! The timeline on the wiki is very out of date and it is full of
questions and completion dates that have passed and was never discussed. Why
has this not been updated as the work progresses? What work has already been
done, and what needs to be done and how can people help? The timeline should
be the central plank for building up the team.
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Timeline
 
> > 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.
> 
Most people will not 'engage with the debate', they will accept it if it
seems reasonable and ignore it if it doesn't. They are hardly likely to join
legal-talk and get eaten alive! If there is already a visible consensus
emerging and if the request comes from someone they trust or who is local
then they are much more likely to say yes.

> > 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?
>

No, we have not seen anything beyond what is on the website. We then paid
for our own legal view, passed this to the foundation and have had a brief 3
line response. I have no idea if their lawyers are paying any attention to
it although I did get a considered response from Jordan which was
encouraging however I don't know where he fits in the picture these days.

What concerns he here is how we have moved from a free-for-all discussion on
legal-talk without structure or timescale to a single person pushing
something through apparently without further community consultation or
engagement. We unfortunately skipped setting up the representative working
party which would have worked well.

Are we seriously planning to release this without presenting the licence to
Yahoo/Flickr (who are already using the data)? Or are there informal
discussions going on anyway that we are not aware of? What about a TV
station. Are we seriously going to release this with getting someone from a
TV station (such as the ITN) saying that they would be happy to use this
one? Are we not going to try it on a few users before emailing 20K+ users?

What about the people who have actively engaged with this process and seem
to have some good knowledge of the subject: Grant, Frederick, Ivan, Simon
and others on legal-talk who are paying attention? Does it not make sense to
try to deal with their concerns and get them on side first?

Let's first update the timeline to represent a process that people are happy
with and which will work and then all work really hard to get the various
jobs done in the minimum time.


Regards,



Peter

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