[OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] Unsetting CT flag

[Anthony]

On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 12:04 PM, Andreas Perstinger
<andreas.perstinger at gmx.net> wrote:
> On 2010-12-08 17:23, Anthony wrote:
>> The OSMF certainly should
>> not, because a very small portion of contributors are members of the
>> OSMF.
>
> I agree with you that more contributors should be members of the OSMF

I never said that "more contributors should be members of the OSMF".
In fact, I don't believe that "more contributors should be members of
the OSMF".  People should only be members of the OSMF if they care
about the functions of the OSMF, which is to *support* OSM, not to
control it.

>> And it's not really any better for the OSM community as a whole
>>
>> to own the database right, especially under a "one person, one vote"
>> scenario.  Why should two people who contribute one node a month be
>> able to override the wishes of one person who contributes 10 million
>> nodes a month?
>
> In your example it looks bad for the one person but in general I'm not
> afraid of a 2/3 majority.

That's probably a key reason for our difference of opinion.  I'm one
of those individualists that Frederik was complaining about.  I'm
quite wary of collectivism and the tyranny of the majority.

>> This also has the advantage of creating a
>> situation where people in some jurisdictions don't have advantages to
>> people in other jurisdictions.
>
> As long as there are no common world rules there will always be differences.

True, which is why I painted this as a secondary advantage, and not
the primary principle.

>> In any case, who would you say owns the database right *right now*?
>
> That's the problem, nobody really knows. I would guess the owner of
> www.openstreetmap.org.

Wouldn't that be the OSMF?

>> How do the CTs change this?
>
> The make clear that OSMF claims the right for the database.

The 1.0 CT doesn't even mention the database right.  1.2 (*) says that
the individual contributors grant the right to the OSMF, but according
to you the individual contributors can't have the right in the first
place.

The situation doesn't seem any more clear to me, except for the fact
that the individual contributors clearly don't have the right.  But
you say that's already clear anyway, because it would be impossible.

If it is possible for the individual contributors to hold the database
right, then the individual contributors *should* hold the database
right.

(*) Is something like 1.2 going to be the next version of the CT?  Is
it just a proposal, or has the decision to modify the CT been made and
only the details need to be sorted out?