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

[Richard Weait]

On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 5:49 AM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Liz wrote:
>>
>> And the arrangement was that whether the licence change went ahead or not
>> depended on how many people agreed to relicense their data
>
> Firstly, if anyone ever said "how many people" then that was a mistake,
> because the number of people is of little interest, it is the amount of
> their contributions that matters.

I feel that the number of contributors is very important.

> Secondly, I think Richard Weait found good words for this at SOTM: Nobody in
> OSMF or the license working group wants to hurt OSM. They are all mappers,
> they all want the project to prosper. They will not take a decision that is
> bad for the project. It is ultimately the board of directors of OSMF who
> will have to decide whether the license change can go ahead and they will
> make this decision once the situation is clear.

Thank you, Frederik.  I'd like to repeat here something else that I
tried to express during the discussion in Girona, as well.

Many of the questions regarding the minimum requirements etc., seem to
be based on the uncertainty of "what if?"  I wish that I could make
that uncertainty go away and tell you what the numbers will be.  But I
just can't.  Anybody who can suggest a way to accurately predict the
user numbers and data % and location and the extent where blank spots
might arise should help us to allay these fears.  But I think that
there are simply too many variables to predict the future in a
sensible way.