[OSM-legal-talk] CT, section 3

Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer olaf at amen-online.de
Fri Nov 26 09:57:54 GMT 2010


Hi Frederik,

> I think the weak point here is the focus of ownership in individual
> contributions. I rather liked it how the new CT/ODbL made it irrelevant
> whether something was "yours" or "mine".

Yes, making it irrelevant whether something was "yours" or "mine" is exactly 
the key point here. 

There seems to be a substantial number of OSMF members who consider all data 
created by individuals to be community-owned, even going so far as to accuse 
people who refuse to accept the CT as "holding our data hostage". This mindset 
gives me a feeling that OSMF and the OpenStreetMap community ignore the many 
hours that I spent for creating OpenStreetMap content. I contributed to 
OpenStreetMap because it is licensed under the CC-BY-SA. I would never have 
contributed under a license that says: "All your work is now ours. You give up 
all control. Bugger off if you disagree."

I have become convinced that the license change to ODbL is important.
If circumstances arrise where a license change to yet another license is 
necessary, then I will happily agree. And I am also fine with a provision that 
allows OSMF to change the license terms in all cases were I simply don't care 
or where I don't have time to look into the issue.

But I want to be asked, not forced.

> Maybe we should work on that bit then. Not give the individual an 
> opt-out right, but instead force OSMF to publish. Something like: "As a 
> condition of this agreement, OSMF agrees not only to license the 
> database under the licenses given, but also to make the database 
> publicly available" or so.

Yes, that would certainly be an improvement over the current wording.

But let me change my thought experiment to something less absurd:
Let us assume the OSMF have a vote to change the license of OpenStreetMap to 
Public Domain some time in the future. Let us also assume that the community 
is highly devided on this issue, with 25% of the active contributors in 
support, 20% in opposition, and 55% not caring either way. The license change 
is then not approved under the CT. Let us assume that the PD-supporters are 
greatly annoyed by the fact the a minority of 20% can prevent what they 
consider to be a vital step for the future of OpenStreetMap. The OSMF 
therefore releases a new version of the CT replacing the 2/3 majority with a 
simple majority. Everyone who does not agree to the new CT is prevented from 
further contributions. After 6 months, none of the PD-opponents are active 
contributors any more, so their contributions can easily be relicensed by a 
2/3 majority decision.

Of course, such a series of events would be hightly damaging to the community. 
But if the current CT are forced on PD-opponents in a similar vein, then the 
harm to the community will be done even sooner.

Bye,

Olaf



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