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

[Rob Myers]

On 06/01/11 01:10, andrzej zaborowski wrote:
>
> Yes, and many more, but still AFAIK a minority.

In terms of the number of projects, yes. But the majority of projects 
are small projects.

>> Many of the most successful projects apart from the Linux kernel in fact.
>>
>> They may be in the numerical minority, but they are the most used and most
>> successful and most influential projects.
>
> Okay, so this is your experience and my experience is pretty much the
> opposite.  The point being both are opinions, no objective statistics
> probably exist and when you say "non-relicenseable data should be at

My argument is that the largest and most widely used projects, with the 
exception of the Linux kernel, have some kind of rights assignment or 
licence.

I forget which logical fallacy this is, but I'm arguing that these are 
useful examples. :-)

> most an exception" that's also just your opinion and in a collective
> project like this you have to take the other view into account,

It's my argument based on the facts of how non-relicensable data could 
affect the ability of the project to relicence in future.

> specially if you haven't even given a chance to vote on the issue to
> the contributors.  At that point it's forcing an opinion on people
> (specially if you publicise it as just a CC-By-SA to ODbL switch).

The only major relicencing I'm aware of that took a plebiscite was 
Wikipedia, after the licence upgrade option was secretly negotiated with 
the FSF and the vote to allow the plebiscite was taken. Even then not 
everyone who has contributed work to Wikipedia got to vote in the 
plebiscite (I didn't).

- Rob.