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

[Rob Myers]

On 07/16/2010 10:25 AM, John Smith wrote:
> On 16 July 2010 18:35, Rob Myers<rob at robmyers.org>  wrote:
>>> 48% for, 6% against, no clear majority...
>>
>> The largest single voting category is clearly the "for" vote.
>>
>> And within the cast votes the result is even clearer.
>
> I guess you misunderstand what "clear majority" means, that is 50.1%
> for, not 48% for...

We're probably hitting different usages here.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Majority

>> There isn't, but the OSM community aren't 4chan.
>
> How does that make it any better, anyone with suitable motivation
> could simply extract a list of usernames from the planet dump and
> start casting votes for and against with enough bias for the outcome
> they choose without making it look like they're actively gaming the
> system. If you like I would be happy to give you a demonstration
> rather than abstract descriptions so as not to give people howto
> manual on it.

I'm sure someone could also hack any vote that required a log-in. Which 
doesn't really get us anywhere.

>> People will not vote to change over if they disagree with the change-over.
>
> Does saying 'no' mean they disagree with the change over or the license?

It means they disagree with the change-over to the licence.

>> Can you suggest a way we can estimate this?
>
> There is simply to many variables to estimate it.

Then complaining that there is not an estimate is futile.

>> ODbL is a comparable licence to BY-SA, with the main change being that it
>> has actually been written to cover data. If people don't relicence because
>> they are afraid not enough people will relicence then that will be a bit of
>> a self-fulfilling prophecy.
>
> Several people have made suggestions on how to prevent this from
> occurring, but you don't seem interested.

s/interested/convinced/

>>> 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?
>>
>> BY-SA does not protect the freedom to use OSM data in Australia. Trying to
>> continue pretending that it does doesn't serve the interests of Australians.
>
> You haven't been paying attention have you?

Failure to agree with someone does not always indicate failure to 
understand them.

> There have been several imports of government data licensed under
> cc-by for Australia and there is also LINZ data for New Zealand which
> is under a similar cc-by license, a lot of people have been pushing
> for a PD style license which would make that data incompatible,
> assuming that ODBL or the new TCs don't making it incompatible
> already, do you really want to upset an entire region of the planet?

I will quite happily upset the entire planet. But that is not my intention.

Has anyone asked the Australian or New Zealand governments how scared 
they would be of ODbL?

>> Someone voting for something is no guarantee that they will do it.
>
> Agreeing to ODBL isn't voting for something.

It's doing something.

>> All there is to fear is fear of fear. ;-)
>
> The road to hell is paved by good intentions...

Indeed.

- Rob.