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

Tobias Knerr osm at tobias-knerr.de
Tue Jul 13 11:11:20 BST 2010


On 13.07.2010 11:31, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
> It's not a vote.

And exactly that is the problem. Mappers didn't have a say in starting 
the license change process, and they won't have a way to stop OSMF if 
they decide that losing half of the data is acceptable.

 > It's a request by the OpenStreetMap Foundation for you personally to
 > consider relicensing your contributions. The only question you're
 > being asked is "do you agree to relicense your contributions?".

There's only one step in the license change process where mappers hold 
any power, and that's their personal agree/decline decision. Its obvious 
that a passionate mapper will want to have a say in the license change, 
and that's why they *will* use that decision to influence it. It's their 
only tool to do so.

If there was a guarantee like "if we have to suffer a loss of more than 
5% of the data, we will hold a vote among active contributors on how to 
proceed", then a mapper could rationally separate the personal decision 
to re-license from the attempt to influence the license change process.

> I hate to get all meta, but there seems to be a lot more "fear of fear of
> the ODbL" than "fear of the ODbL" (not to say the latter doesn't exist).

There is fear of the OSMF making a bad decision, and that's entirely 
justified if you consider the refusal to provide *any* meaningful 
indication of how that decision will look like.

Tobias Knerr




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