[OSM-legal-talk] CTs are not full copyright assignment

[Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer]

Hi Kai,

> One could have given voting rights to all people who have once reached
> "active contributor" status and retain sufficient interest in the project
> to keep their email address up to date and respond to the vote within 3
> weeks.

I agree.

> However, Frederick is correct, that this kind of change to the CT (i.e.
> definitions of who is allowed to vote and how)  is indeed very hard, as it
> would be incompatible with the current CT, as it is a global change rather
> than a change just effecting the local contributor.

I see no problem here.

The CT require both a positive vote in the OSMF and a 2/3 majority of a 
narrowly defined subgroup of the community.

The new CT could require a positive vote in the OSMF and a 2/3 majority of the 
whole community.

For a license change, we would then need a positive vote in the OSMF, a 2/3 
majority of a narrowly defined subgroup of the community, and a 2/3 majority 
of the whole community.

The new CT could require a positive vote in the OSMF and a 2/3 majority of the 
whole community.

> What could however be done without requiring to reask everyone to update to
> the latest CT, would be to include a sentence in that clause along the line
> that "OSMF may only ban you from editing if there is clear indication of
> vandalism to the data or if other technical missuse can be shown". Thus
> political banning of people who don't agree with the OSMF will no longer be
> allowed and thus couldn't affect who is eligible for voting. Then one
> wouldn't need to rely on the sysadmins being "reasonable" and the sysadmins
> would not be in the awkward position of having to decide if OSMF is being
> reasonable or not.

This would be another possible way forward.

But more important is whether there is a willingnes to fix the problem.

Olaf