[OSM-legal-talk] The OSM licence: where we are, where we're going

[Dair Grant]

Christopher Schmidt wrote:

>I think OSM pursuing a copyleft scheme under the licenses discussed
>in the blog post is more inline with OSM spirit as widely expressed
>by the community, in my opinion, than pursing a public domain style
>dedication.

Conversely, I think that a public domain style dedication is 
more inline with the OSM spirit.

As the front page of the wiki says, "most maps...actually have 
legal or technical restrictions on their use, holding back 
people from using them in creative, productive or unexpected ways".


Although investigating other licences is definitely worth doing, 
I think it would also be good for the Foundation to come up with 
a proposal for how these big decisions can get taken.

Something like a licence change is obviously a good candidate, 
but there are other situations where a way to take a straw poll 
of the OSM community would be helpful for figuring out what kind 
of numbers we are talking about.

Only a small minority of people read, or post to, the mailing 
lists so discussion here can be a bit distorted (if 99% of users 
don't read this list, should the 1% who do get to decide for them?).

When a licence/privacy policy/whatever does get selected, what 
%ge of our 20972 users need to agree to make it binding?


-dair
___________________________________________________
dair at refnum.com              http://www.refnum.com/