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

[80n]

On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 4:10 PM, Gervase Markham <gerv-gmane at gerv.net>wrote:

> On 14/07/10 04:12, 80n wrote:
>
>> The correct way to re-license a project is to fork it.
>>
>
> What large body of people holds that opinion, such that you can be so
> dogmatic?
>

The correct way to make any significant and contentious change to a project
is to fork it.  Significant changes that are not universally supported will
cause a project serious damage if they are dealt with this way.  The license
change has been damaging OSM for well over two years.  It could have been
dealt with much more swiftly by creating a fork back then when there were
only 2,500 contributors.  Instead we've had a running sore that is set to
continue for some time yet.

The ODbL proponents know that a fork would be risky and would probably fail.
Instead they tried to effect change from within.  This continues to damage
OSM.  If there's no conclusion by September 1st then I believe that the move
to re-license should be considered to have failed.


>
> We relicensed the entire Mozilla codebase without forking it. We had 99.8%
> (or something like that) of people agree.


It's unlikely that 99.8% of OSM contributors will agree to ODbL.  This is
not a comparable situation.


>
>

> Can we all stop speculating about what percentage of people, or data, or
> objects, or countries are going to support it, and do whatever's necessary
> so that we can actually _ask_? Then we can figure out what to do. If the
> number is not 100%, no doubt people will have different opinions. At that
> point, it may be that OSMF says no, others say yes, and there's a fork. Or
> it may be that OSMF says yes, other say no, and there's a fork. Or it may be
> that we all agree yes, or all agree no.
>
> And this is the problem with trying to have any kind of fair vote.  What do
you count.  Number of contributors? Number of contributions?  Number of
respondents?  Number of recent contributors?  You'll never even get
agreement on how to measure this process fairly.  A fork is actually the
only practical and undeniable way to achieve such change.

80n



> Let's do it and find out.
>
> Gerv
>
>
>
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