[OSM-legal-talk] Contact Info For Tom Hughes Regarding Public Domain Mailing List

[SteveC]

If I ever start a open project again I will put a mission statement  
central to it. I think I was the one who originally wrote "The project  
was started because most maps you think of as free actually have legal  
or technical restrictions on their use, holding back people from using  
them in creative, productive, or unexpected ways." I would add  
something about it being viral too as I feel strongly that that is  
pretty central to the success of things here.

The real reason the PD folks don't go make  
ReallyFreeAndOpenStreetMapThisTime.org is they know it will never  
work. 10 people on the least signal/noise list in a project with  
80,000 people in it aren't going to make the PD unicorn fly. Most  
people in the project that I speak to roll their eyes at this list  
because first it's full of ill or openly badly informed people making  
complex legal arguments and second that they clearly have a lot of  
time on their hands. I can't even make some of the people I respect  
most join the list! I applaud the structure that's developed recently  
and led to those use cases for example, but the notion that such a  
tiny minority would change things is about as likely as dropping all  
the software and moving to WFS-T.

Fundamentally, if in some magic way we went PD all you will do is  
force the SA people to go start another project... so why can't the PD  
people skip all that effort and start their own? Then we can just  
import their stuff. We will be happy with our better dataset and our  
idea of freedom and the PD people will be happy dreaming about  
spaceships and their idea of freedom.

On 25 Oct 2008, at 19:20, Joseph Gentle wrote:

> Steve: I'm confused. Please reconcile these two statements:
>
> On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 5:50 PM, SteveC <steve at asklater.com> wrote:
>> Guys OSM isn't going PD... can't you go start
>> ReallyFreeAndOpenStreetMap.org or something?
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Steve
>
> On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 12:33 PM, Simon Ward <simon at bleah.co.uk>  
> wrote:
>> I'm a member of the foundation, but that doesn't entitle me to say
>> something is or isn't a part of OSM.
>
>
> Also, if 'the community' does make decisions, whats the decision
> making process? Are informal email-list polls appropriate? Can we make
> web-based polls on the OSM wiki?
>
> How does the OSM foundation get feedback from the community?
>
> -J
>
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>

Best

Steve