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

John Smith deltafoxtrot256 at gmail.com
Thu Jul 15 23:39:54 BST 2010


On 16 July 2010 08:32, Rob Myers <rob at robmyers.org> wrote:
> If we are allowed to arbitrarily redefine how votes should be counted then,
> as I say, only 6.05% of the total possible electorate voted against
> relicencing.

48% for, 6% against, no clear majority...

> The informal poll indicates that for the most part they are not.

This is like Fox taking a poll about how people voted and then
declaring a winner rather than actually waiting for votes to be
counted, it's meaningless for the most part and further more the poll
used doesn't link to actual accounts so there is nothing stopping
people from gaming the system.

> I am not opposed to giving the contributors a vote. They can vote with their
> data. That is the only practical and effective way for the community to

That isn't a vote, and it's confusing 2 issues in one,
agreeing/disagreeing with a license and voting for/against a change
over if the amount of data lost is unacceptable.

> express their will, and the OSMF vote that we are discussing enabled it to
> take place.
>
> Giving the community a ballot vote would first be voted on by the OSMF. Then
> even if the community did vote to relicence, ****the voluntary relicencing
> system would still have to be used because OSMF cannot relicence the project
> as a whole like Wikimedia did****.

I'm aware of that, that isn't my point, my point is I want to make an
informed decision on how much data will be lost if we relicense, so
far no one anywhere can know this.

I don't know if 50% of the data for Australia would be lost, which
would not be in my interest, so why would agree to the change over and
be steam rolled by people in other parts of the world only caring
about what's best in their interest?

> This means that the project might still not reach "critical mass" if people
> didn't choose to relicence. The outcome of the ballot(s) would be rendered
> void. Everyone's time would be wasted and the will of the community would be
> less clear than ever before.

This is exactly the point, unless we split the license change
agreement up and have a separate community vote on the change over
once it's know the state of relicensing a lot of us are nervous about
agreeing to relicense.




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