[OSM-legal-talk] JOSM and spam

[Frederik Ramm]

Erik,

On 11/25/10 00:30, Erik Johansson wrote:
> And I'm very disappointed that people think mass mailing is ok, it's
> not informing people in any useful way.

I don't think mass mailing is ok, and we should not encourage it.

On the other hand, even after the process has been going on for far more 
than two years, we *still* have people who complain that they have not 
been adequately informed, so we will certainly not *reduce* the amount 
of information about the new license. This does not mean we should tell 
people to mass-mail, but we should not remain silent about the license 
change either.

Grant has quoted the current text in the JOSM startup message, and it is 
no different than what we have on every Wiki page, or the article on the 
openstreetmap.de front page, or elsewhere. This is information and not 
incitement to mass mailing, and will not be removed.

I don't know why the wording "OpenStreetMap is changing its license. 
This requires user affirmation. ..." would be misunderstood by some as 
"please email lots of people and tell them". Maybe you have a suggestion 
for a better choice of words? I have no problem with changing the 
wording (although I am neither the person who put it there, nor the 
person who has the last word on it).

Also, using the OSM user-to-user messaging system for true mass emails 
is not the intended use, and has led to banned accounts in the past. I 
have no doubt that if someone were to send out a significant number of 
messages that way, they would at least be in for questioning by the admins.

If you feel harassed by another project member, let me know who they are 
and what they did and I'll talk to them.

Bye
Frederik