[Osmf-talk] New license change proposal status

[80n]

On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 10:06 PM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:

> Grant,
>
> Grant Slater wrote:
> > Everyone agreeing is unfortunately a bit utopian, there will never be
> > uniform consensus and there will be those who feel partially
> > aggrieved.
>
> That's why we have to do everything to keep the number of partially
> aggrieved people low.
>
> I strongly believe that by adding the "yes and by the way I am for PD
> anyway" option you will have *less* aggrieved people, not more. And it
> doesn't really hurt anyone, unless your ego can't take the risk that
> lots of people choose the third option.
>
> If the license change proposal went through like that and you had 90% of
> people saying "yes and by the way I am for PD anyway", then what do you
> lose except perhaps the right to claim that the majority of OSM
> contributors prefers a share-alike license?
>
> It's not that I am calling for a vote. Whether someone says ODbL or PD
> would not make a difference, you would still do ODbL.
>
> I don't think that a survey (as suggested by MikeC) which may optionally
> be taken by those who care enough to do so and where people can say that
> they would have voted PD if they had had the chance cuts it. I want
> everyone to be given the yes/no/don't ask again option. I belive that
> the number of people agreeing to PD is especially high among those who
> don't care, and offering these people an optional survey will not make
> them express their mind, leading to distorted survey results.
>
> I would very much prefer us adopting a PD (or CC0 or BSD) license
> altogether and I don't see reason for scaremongering. But I can see that
> neither side can get all their wishes fulfilled and I am willing to
> compromise. I think I could bring myself to agree to a proposal that
> lets mappers, if they so desire, declare that their contribution is PD
> and at the same time has OSMF use this declaration to implement ODbL.
> That way, you would reach out to people like me and give them a serious
> opportunity to make their voice count WITHOUT derailing the whole process.
>
> I'm going out on a limb here but even for those who passionately believe
> in share-alike, clicking the "ODbL" button will probably feel better if
> they do so in the face of having the option to sign away their IP
> altogether by clicking "PD"!
>
> I believe that this will result in a majority of people saying PD.
> That's it. Everything else would go ahead as planned. But at least this
> would be clear and recorded. Because otherwise, over time, funny myths
> will build, and in the end people will say that in 2010, OSM mappers
> overwhelmingly agreed to ODbL "because they thought share-alike was
> important" (not: because they had no other choice).
>
> Speaking of funny myths:
>
> > At the State of the Map conference 2007 an informal vote was held, the
> > result was by far in favour of using a By-Attribution Share-Alike type
> > license.
>
> Do you have any recording to back that up? Because as I recall this, we
> had the panel discussion which Nick was moderating, and right at the
> end, after it had emerged that share-alike was fraught with problems,
> Nick asked something like "now, after this discussion, who would say
> let's just do PD and get on mapping" (or so), and we had a very clear
> majority in a show of hands, to which Nick responded with something like
> "that's a lot" or "that's clear then" or so. I still hope that the
> recording shows up somewhere because I am quite sure that Nick verbally
> commented the show of hands, so it would have been caught on tape.
>
> I was on the panel for that discussion.  I was the main person arguing for
attribution/share-alike.  My recollection is that the informal show of hands
was against attribution/share-alike and in favour of PD.  Does anyone have
the tapes?

For the record I am still in favour of an attribution / share-alike type of
license but strongly believe that the new license proposal is not the right
solution.  I have no problem with anyone who wants to make their
contributions available in the public domain.

80n


> I am surprised that your recollection of this event should be the exact
> opposite as mine. But then again, it doesn't matter for the question at
> hand - even if all 50 or so people present in that room at SOTM 2007 had
> been pro PD, you'd still be recommending a share-alike license, and even
> if all 50 had been pro share-alike I would still claim that a large
> group of people doesn't care.
>
> Bye
> Frederik
>
> --
> Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
>
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