[OSM-legal-talk] Noise vs unanswered questions

[Rob Myers]

On 09/02/2010 12:55 PM, TimSC wrote:
>
> The question I was asking was primarily about HOW we reach that
> consensus, which you did not address. If you had specifically answered
> my questions, it would have helped.

My understanding (such as it is) of how OSM works comes from having 
watched it online over the years. The public record shows that there 
have been several years of conference events, mailing list discussions, 
working group and board meetings and other events dedicated to deciding 
on the licence issue.

This has resulted in consensus. The actual discussions, debates and 
votes at events across the different fora have led over time to a 
compromise that upsets just about everyone equally (apart from those 
jurisdictions with valid concerns about losing major contributions, who 
are quite rightly more upset).

If you want something more detailed to compare unfavourably to a 100% 
plebiscite-driven direct democracy like Wikipedia, OCAL, Debian, GNU, 
Apache and Project Gutenberg don't use then I recommend:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Memorandum_and_Articles_of_Association

http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Working_Groups

http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/State_Of_The_Map

- Rob.