[OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate

[Grant Slater]

Frederik Ramm wrote:
> Hi,
>
> SteveC wrote:
>   
>> In the past couple of license working group meetings we've been trying 
>> to figure out how to get more input from the community on everything 
>> without descending in to a free-for-all.
>>     
>
> Does that mean that what we've so far collected on the Wiki (and the 
> lists, and the co-ment site) is considered as having "descended" into a 
> "free-for-all" and thus by implication somehow worthless? (Still 
> struggling to see the negative in "free-for-all" but you seem to be 
> convinced that the license must not be discussed by "all".)
>
>   

My views, not the Licensing Working Group (LWG)....

The issues from the Wiki have recently been sent to the licensing legal 
council, LWG haven't yet had an answer.

I am not a lawyer and even as a member of the licensing working group I 
am unsuitable to answer most (all?) of the _legal_ questions. OSM 
process discussion I can handle...

Item from the minutes:
http://foundation.openstreetmap.org/licensing-working-group-minutes-2009-03-06/
"* Open community call + IRC sessions in order to address questions. 
Weekend scheduled. March 14th, 4PM tentative. 2 hours. Technical chair 
needed (Andy?) w/ another media open for raising hands (another irc 
channel). Agenda needed, designed by community, with times for each 
issue (3-4 issues)."

> You say that "issues should be raised on IRC"; does that mean that you 
> only want to discuss *additional* issues that are not yet on the Wiki, 
> or are you basically requesting that people copy+paste the Wiki pages 
> into IRC if they want to affirm the importance of these issues? Or is 
> this more of a psychological exercise where Joe Mapper is allowed to 
> speak his mind and be heard to make him happy (in which case it would be 
> ok for 10 people in a row to say the same thing).
>
>   

See above. We waiting for reply. Licensing Working Group (LWG) going 
through the questions on the Wiki to make sure we have forwarded all the 
relevant legal question. Wiki will likely be updated in that process.

The wiki isn't the only medium and we may have accidentally overlooked 
some other questions. The phone call is an attempt to address this and 
encourage more people to feel part of the process.

Maybe we should hold the telephone call in Esperanto or Volapük. But 
seriously... Maybe transcribe the first call and translate and follow up 
the call with a German call or German mailing lists discussion, 
whichever is best for the regional community.
Then again, the LWG may have made a bad decision here, we are human 
after all.

Regards
 Grant