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

[80n]

On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 12:32 PM, Andy Allan <gravitystorm at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 12:12 PM, 80n <80n80n at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The correct way to re-license a project is to fork it.
>
> I whole-heartedly disagree. Do you think that wikipedia should have
> forked for their relicensing? Or Mozilla? They managed to find ways to
> achieve relicensing without the massive upheaval of starting a new
> project - instead they brought everyone along with them and built on
> their success.
>
> Forking is what happens to projects when they fail, and I don't
> believe anyone here wants OpenStreetMap to fail.
>
> I thought the whole reason for the relicensing was because CC-BY-SA was an
epic fail.  For five years people have been saying that OSM won't work
because of the license.  Well, Chicken Little, the sky has not fallen in,
and last time I looked OSM was working pretty well.




> > But the proponents
> > of the ODbL don't have the courage to do that.  Instead they are trying
> to
> > do it by attrition.  First they give newbies no choice.  Eventually, they
> > hope, the number of newbies and new content will be overwhelming.
>
> Interesting accusation. Are you accusing all ODbL proponents of having
> this plan? Or just the LWG? Or do you care to name anyone in
> particular? Because otherwise your accusations aren't very
> constructive.
>

The minutes show that Steve Coast, Richard Fairhurst, Mike Collinson and
Andy Robinson and me decided this on 20th March 2008.
http://www.osmfoundation.org/images/e/e3/Osmf_boardminutes_20080320.pdf  And
yes, I understood the implications of this and all voted for it (it may even
have been my idea).


> > If they had any guts they'd have forked the project.  And they don't have
> > the guts to put it to a straight vote either.  With no deadline there's
> > never a point at which anyone can say they failed.
> >
> > How much time is needed?  Everything is in place, the LWG has had several
> > years to prepare.  If there isn't a clear majority by September 1st then
> I'd
> > say the relicensing has failed.
>
> Thanks, that is what I was asking. By clear majority do you mean a
> clear majority of respondents, or a clear majority of active
> contributors, or a clear majority of all contributors? And would you
> confirm what %age equates to a clear majority?
>

I think it has to be factored by the size of contribution.  The size of the
resulting database should be the key determinant.  However, this would be
seriously skewed by TIGER and other imports.  Perhaps bulk imports can be
balanced by counting on both sides.  So compare the volume of data that
would be licensed under ODbL with the corresponding volume of data that
would be licensed under CC-BY-SA.  Then a simple largest wins criteria would
work.

80n
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