[Osmf-talk] Results of OSMF Member Vote

[Lars Francke]

On Sun, Dec 27, 2009 at 02:31, Matt Amos <matt at asklater.com> wrote:
> the OSMF member vote has been closed, and the results from 270 members
> polled** are:
>
>  Approved the process:        132
>  Did not approve the process:  16
>  Didn't vote:                 122

Having read the license proposal file and the Implementation Plan I
wonder what exactly the question and possible answers were for this
vote[1]. I'm not sure if this result means that we'll switch to ODbL
now (as per [2]) or if some other _process_ was approved that might
include further votes (possibly by all OSM members) as was brought up
on the mailing lists in the past weeks. It was hard to keep track of
all those license discussions

> alternatively,
>
>  Approval rate: 89%
>  Turnout rate:  55%

This is neither criticism nor should it be seen as an expression of my
opinion: I _believe_ that those who are in favor of the license change
were more likely to vote as a non-vote can be more easily seen as a
rejection of the process.
So to put those numbers in another way:

Explicit approval rate across all those OSMF members that were
eligible to vote: 48,9 %
Rate of explicit disapprovals:
                                    5,9 %
Didn't vote:
                                          45,2 %

Or to put it in words:
The simple majority approved the process.
The absolute majority did not approve the process.

The simple two-thirds majority approved the process.
The absolute two-thirds majority did not approve the process.

And I just had a look through the archives and the wiki but the only
thing I could find was: "What follows is based on a positive response
from the ODbL adoption vote...".
Has it been decided which type of majority is needed to qualify this
vote as a "positive response"?

Cheers,
Lars

[1] I was one of those few that joined after 13th of October so I
wasn't allowed to vote
[2] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Implementation_Plan