[OSM-legal-talk] License Cut-over and critical mass

Kai Krueger kakrueger at gmail.com
Sun Jul 11 12:18:39 BST 2010


Hello,

It is good to see that progress is being made on the licensing changeover
and it does feel like the whole thing is getting closer. It also feels like
the "complaints" and discussions are shifting away from the license it self
more towards the technical process and contributor terms, which I would see
as a form of progress.

However, I think a couple of the most controversial and critical questions
regarding this changeover process are still mostly unclear and undefined and
so I would like to again try and start the discussion to pin down some of
these questions which would imho help get more support in the community as
it would hopefully reduce the feeling of unease.

I know this question has been asked (and discussed)  multiple times,
including as recently as today during the SoTM session with it being the
first question to be asked, however I don't feel that any satisfactory
answer has yet been given to this fundamental question.

Enough of preamble, so here again I would like to ask the question again:

What is the criterion of when "critical mass" is reached and thus data is
lost (even if it isn't lost as data, it is lost to the project and the
(editing) community)? Who gets to decide this criterion? What are the
objectives of those deciding this criterion? What influence does the wider
community have on setting these criteria? Will at least the full OSMF
membership have a vote on the question of if it is enough. If yes, what
would be the formalities of this vote? simple majority? Absolute majority of
members?

I very much appreciate the fact that it is so far impossible to predict what
exactly will happen and how it will all play out and thus some flexibility
is indeed needed, but precisely because it is so unpredictable, I very much
believe we need to play through a couple of "What if" scenarios and come up
with some guidelines beforehand of how to address likely scenarios.

For example which democratic system would you have any trust in that sets
out a vote, for e.g. a new president, then waits until the votes are counted
and only then the incumbent president gets to decide how many votes of
support he needs to stay president? And trust is one of the biggest assets
that need to be built in order to get this process to a happy end.

So far the the impressions I got from the members of the licensing group
vary from anywhere between e.g. 10% data loss is acceptable to as high as
90% data loss is acceptable (as long as a majority of signed up accounts
agree), which means as far as I can interpret, there is no where close to an
agreed process even within the licensing group.

My impression so far has been that amongst LWG and OSMF board members
generally the consensus appears to be that some data loss is fine and that
exponential growth will quickly paper over any data loss. However, I haven't
seen much consideration put on the consequences of data loss on the
community and its motivation. Will people start dropping out of the
community if suddenly lots of data around them disappears? Or even worse, if
their own data that they have put so much effort (and money) into collecting
(due to derivative issues) gets removed even though they accepted OdBL?

Some data loss is indeed unfortunately unavoidable, and if they are small
enough "exponential growth" will fix these reasonably soon, but it does mean
those data loss limits have to be set quite low and it means the exact form
of these limits can be vital to the well being of the community.  But at the
moment, the last opportunity for people to influence these limits is by
rejecting the OdBL. Not because they don't like the OdBL, but because they
have the community at their hart. 

Let me draw an analogy to how I see this setting of the criterion of
critical mass: I would compare the criterion as the emergency exit of an
aircraft and the change process as the travel. Nobody wants to use or even
expects to use the emergency exit, but never the less you are always
instructed to make sure you know exactly where that emergency exit is in
case you do need it. I do think the loss of data has the potential for real
danger to the community and I do think many others are worried about this
too. If there are clear minimum requirements, I also think many people are
much more willing and happy to embark on this adventure and it is more
likely to come to a happy end. 

Kai

P.S. I apologise for the perhaps a bit harsh tone of voice and loose use of
analogies in this email, but I hope we can nevertheless use it as a
constructive basis to _rationally_ discuss these important questions. I also
would like to express my great respect towards the members of the LWG who
have done a great job so far who have donated a hugh amount of
(unfortunately unthankful) time into this important process.

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