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

James Livingston lists at sunsetutopia.com
Fri Jul 16 13:12:10 BST 2010


On 16/07/2010, at 6:28 PM, Andy Allan wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 11:53 PM, 80n <80n80n at gmail.com> wrote:
>> There's only one undeniable fact in this whole affair.  Exactly 100% of all
>> contributors have signed up to CC-BY-SA and have indicated that they are
>> willing to contribute their data under that license.
> 
> Given that that has been the only option, that's hardly surprising.
> Nobody was ever given the option to contribute under a different
> license. Using this to bolster your position is a bit disingenuous,
> especially since the last 30,000 people have also agreed to ODbL
> without any mass hysteria.

Using 30 000 people signing up with dual-licensing is just as disingenuous, we have no way of knowing how many people would have signed up with the old licence in the same period. I doubt there at many people who changed their mind after seeing ODbL+CTs, but we can't know.


> "They" do, both amongst Foundation members and by a (small) survey of
> contributors. Now we'll find out what the full contributor body has to
> say, but you're pretty outspoken in trying to ensure this stage has a
> time limit - effectively ensuring that some people will be excluded. I
> expect you'd be quite happy to see as many people as possible failing
> to meet whatever deadline you wish to see imposed on the relicensing,
> since that works in your favour too.

I absolutely think we need a time limit, I don't how long it should be, but we need one so we don't stay in the future-licence limbo forever.

I'm sure there are quite a few people who have data that they have been given access to that they'd like to import into OSM, but aren't due to not knowing what licence it will be under in the future. I had some CC-BY data (parks and conservation area boundaries, which can't be acquired on the ground) which I wasn't uploading because I didn't know if I'd have to remove it after a licence change.

Since it's been dragging on for ages, I've just gone "screw it" and started uploading it. Someone can go and sort out the mess of removing it if we change licence.


> After reading your arguments on the wiki and all these messages it's
> pretty clear you want to keep the CC-BY-SA license, ignore the
> fundamental problems with it, and have little interest in any other
> option. And if we gave you a veto, you'd use it, regardless of how
> many people want ODbL.

And you want to change to ODbL, ignoring the fundamental problems with that, regardless of how many people don't.

These arguments are just going to go round and round until we try to relicense and get an answer one way or the other. Hopefully soon.



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