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

[Anthony]

On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 4:53 AM, Tobias Knerr <osm at tobias-knerr.de> wrote:
> John Smith wrote:
>> On 6 January 2011 10:11, Tobias Knerr <osm at tobias-knerr.de> wrote:
>>> This would not be better at all, it would render the whole idea of
>>> relicensing via Contributor Terms pointless.
>>
>> This aregument you keep stating about people thinking the data is
>> owned by people isn't the full store, in fact I think it was Anthony
>> that pointed this out the other day about people collaborating on a
>> movie project and having a certain expectation about the licensing at
>> the end of it
>
> Yes, I remember - he used this example to show that majority relicensing
> "is not a natural consequence of a collective effort". But that was
> never quite my point.
>
> Relicensing through majority /does/ make sense for a collective effort
> if the intention is to be actually able to perform a license change.

Sure.  But it's not my intention that OSM be actually able to perform
a license change.  I haven't been sold that the ability to change
licenses, as opposed to the ability to upgrade to a new version of the
same license, is more important than the principle of, as you put it,
individual data ownership.

As I've agreed in the past, it is indeed a fundamental philosophical
disagreement.  I am a strong believer that individual ownership, as
opposed to collective ownership, produces the best and most fair
results.

I don't believe that large groups of people, acting collectively via
voting, make good decisions about licenses.  And, in fact, I think you
will find that even among successful projects which have delegated
license decisions away from the individual contributors, that the vast
majority of them have delegated those decisions to individuals or to
very small groups/boards/committees, not to the membership at large or
to the contributors at large.