[OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate

[Russ Nelson]

On Mar 14, 2009, at 4:32 PM, Ulf Möller wrote:
> However, the time between the publication of the license and the vote
> will be increased from 3 to 10 days so as to allow legal review of the
> license.

Thanks for this summary, Ulf.  I have generally been staying out of  
this conversation because I think the license change is necessary, and  
that the OSMF is trustworthy and is doing a good job.  But it also  
needs to be SEEN as doing a good job, and lengthening the time period  
is a good idea toward that end.  I believe that there will be problems  
in the 1.0 license, but we won't be able to know them immediately  
(just like the GPL wasn't well understood for about the first five  
years of its existence -- go read gnu-misc-discuss archives if you  
don't believe me).  As long as the new license is enough better than  
the old to justify the effort needed to switch, it's worth switching.

> OSMF will try to communicate the purpose of the license change better
> with emphasis on the ShareAlike issue. They will try to address the
> German, Italian, etc communities better.

No. Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try.

--
Russ Nelson - http://community.cloudmade.com/blog - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:RussNelson
russ at cloudmade.com - Twitter: Russ_OSM - http://openstreetmap.org/user/RussNelson