[OSM-legal-talk] CTs and the 1 April deadline

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 01/04/11 13:31, John Smith wrote:
>> you misunderstood. After 31st March you have to mandatory agree to CT in
>> order to continue to EDIT.
>> eg: After this date no NEW nearmap data could be inserted unless compatible
>> with CT.
>
> Which brings up the other point of contention about the 2/3rds of
> active contributors that others have pointed out, namely that you lock
> out people from contributing further that may object to further
> license change there by being able to do things like vote stacking to
> suit your agenda...

No Nearmap data can be added after April 1st but that doesn't have 
anything to do with your scenario. Anyone who has contributed to OSM in 
the past can continue to contribute provided that they accept the CT. If 
they cannot do that with their current account, they can create a new 
account. No *person* is barred from contributing.

But you are right in that there is a weakness because people are not 
guaranteed a right to contribute. We cannot guarantee that right of 
course - for example, in the totalitarian future, legal reasons might 
force OSMF to require that contributors sign some sort of indemnity form 
or something. Then OSMF would have to say "only people who sign this 
form can continue contributing". Someone who doesn't sign, loses his 
active contributor status, and thereby his eligibility to vote. OSMF 
might also ban individuals for vandalism or other unruly behaviour. OSMF 
might also simply be overrun by contributions and technically unable to 
accept all contributions offered. - These are things that we must live 
with - we cannot say that OSMF must somehow always allow everyone to 
contribute. It's not practical.

But what could we do? Two ideas come to mind:

1. In the CT, put in a clause that basically says you grant OSMF all 
these rights on the condition that they always use these CT or a 
modified version that has been agreed upon by 2/3 of active 
contributors. This would make sure that even if OSMF is run over by 
criminals, there would be no incentive to try and change the CT in order 
to have it easier to change the license later.

2. Amend the definition of "active contributor"; instead of

"a natural person (whether using a single or multiple accounts) who has 
edited the Project in any 3 calendar months from the last 12 months 
(i.e. there is a demonstrated interest over time); and has maintained a 
valid email address in their registration profile and responds within 3 
weeks."

put:

"a natural person (whether using a single or multiple accounts) who has 
either (a) edited the Project in any 3 calendar months from the last 12 
months (i.e. there is a demonstrated interest over time) or (b) has met 
this requirement at an earlier time and explicitly asked within the last 
12 calendar months to be considered an active contributor; and has 
maintained a valid email address in their registration profile and 
responds within 3 weeks."

The wording is probably not perfect, but the idea is that once you've 
been an active contributor you can, if you want, keep that status up by 
simply asking for it. Sort of a "keepalive" signal. So if someone is 
hell-bent on participating in all future 2/3 decisions but doesn't want 
to contribute any more, they can simply put their name against a certain 
wiki page (or whatever mechanism is chosen) once a year instead of 
having to make one edit in three of twelve months.

Bye
Frederik