[OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] License to kill

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

80n wrote:
> its better to have a vibrant  community than a license that
> maximises the possible use cases at the expense of hard won contributors.

I do not think that it is fair to assume that lack of share-alike and/or 
attribution would mean that the community was any less vibrant. I do not 
see the polarisation between "user interests" and "community interests" 
that you seem to see.

I think the important connection between the project and the people is 
that they have created the project, that it is their "baby", and they 
care for it. *That* is the main distinction between OSM and, say, TIGER: 
TIGER has been created by an act of government and not by the people.

You seem to think that unless people have written guarantee that they 
get something in return, they will not contribute. I do not agree and I 
think you severely underestimate the willingness of people to contribute 
to something they like - heck, Google Map Maker has BETTER maps than OSM 
for some areas, and they tell everybody upfront that NOTHING is being 
given back!

In fact, I would feel insulted if somebody publicly assumed that I would 
not participate in a project without a written guarantee of getting 
something back. There may be such people but I would not like to be 
counted among them.

That being said - the proposed ODbL *has* a written guarantee that 
something is being given back; it just does not promise to give 
*everything* back, and I think it strikes a very good balance between 
the interests of the "data producers" and "data consumers" (your choice 
of words, I think it's a bit one-sided). Without users, the project is 
useless, so there can be no absolute priority of one side over the other.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"