[OSM-legal-talk] Noise vs unanswered questions
Rob Myers
rob at robmyers.org
Fri Sep 3 10:54:50 BST 2010
On 09/03/2010 10:03 AM, Simon Ward wrote:
>
> I don’t see much compromise happening from OSMF on the contributor
> terms. There is a very small amount, but OSMF seems to want to stick as
> close to what they have, with no chance of what they consider a
> significant change.
If anyone can suggest a way of combining the ability to change the
licence in future with increasingly not being able to do so as more and
more contributors become uncontactable I'm sure a compromise can be
found. ;-)
> The contributor terms are now the sticking point for many people against
> the ODbL+DbCL+CT combination, and these are not just people against a
> licence change from CC by-sa, but people who are in principle happy with
> the licence change.
This is a change that cannot be sugar-coated. It is needed in order to
ensure that if future changes become necessary they can be made.
I'm sorry to be harsh but I think that concentrating on the risks of the
new CTs rather than the risks they are meant to address shows a failure
of perspective. I don't believe that a stoic or pollyannaish acceptance
that the licence of OSM may gradually be rendered ineffective by change
outside the project is morally superior to enabling the project to rise
to future challenges.
The current licencing of OSM isn't perfect, that's why things are meant
to be changing. Even if the ODbL is perfect when it is applied, it may
not be in future. We cannot know, and yes that cuts both ways. But we
can look at other projects and see that some of the largest and most
successful have relicenced. And we can see that new threats to Free
Software and Free culture keep arising. Free geodata is unlikely to be
any different.
And if people are worried that future changes will not be to their
liking they need to get involved in the process more actively.
> These contributor terms define a large part of how the future direction
> of OSM may be determined.
They define in large part that it *may* be determined.
- Rob.
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