[Osmf-talk] Results of OSMF Member Vote

Matija Nalis mnalis-openstreetmap-osmflist at voyager.hr
Sun Dec 27 12:43:19 UTC 2009


On Sun, Dec 27, 2009 at 01:31:28AM +0000, Matt Amos wrote:
> the OSMF member vote has been closed, and the results from 270 members  
> polled** are:

Thanks for the results, Matt

>   Approved the process:        132
>   Did not approve the process:  16
>   Didn't vote:                 122
>
> alternatively,
>
>   Approval rate: 89%
>   Turnout rate:  55%

Those numbers frighten me very much, if we are to proceed with ODbL
implementation plan as charted. 

I would actually expect OSMF membership to be *more* interested in the
license change issues than the average OSM contributor; but even if we
assume that it is representative of the general OSM population, it is
terrible !

If the general OSM poll (that is: "do you relicense" question) has the
similar results, it would be catastrophic. Data from *more than half* of the
users would have to be removed. Add to that the multiple editors of the the
same points/ways/relations and we could easily end up with something like
2/3 (or more) of the map being deleted (or at least very heavily damaged).

Even *much* better results (like "only" 20% of the map being destroyed)
would be IMO too horrible to justify the advantages the clearer license
brings. Not to mention the social problems such an action would bring: this
project thrives on enthusiasm of users; if much of someones work of several
years gets removed because *someone else* didn't want (or bother) to
relicense, there is no way such guy/gal is going to spread a nice word about
OSM, much less contribute ever again.

IMHO, anything more than 10% of data being destroyed (and that is probably
less than 10% of the users) would bring much more damage than good to the
project. (And that is assuming ODbL *is* the perfect solution to the problem,
which it might turn out not to be).

Some time ago[1] I tried (without much success) to get some answers what the
Board thinks would be a acceptable number of user/data loss under which the
license change should proceed.

With this results of OSMF vote; I think it is essential that this is cleared
out before we proceed with implementation plan. Actually, I think the OSMF
membership should be asked about it.

Therefore, I would ask the Board to make the following poll to the
OSMF membership before proceeding with implementation plan:

"We should proceed with change of license only if that would result in:

(a) no data being removed at all
(b) less than 1% of the data being removed
(c) less than 5% of the data being removed
(d) less than 10% of the data being removed
(e) less than 15% of the data being removed
(f) less than 20% of the data being removed
(g) less than 25% of the data being removed
(h) less than 35% of the data being removed
(i) less than 50% of the data being removed
(j) less than 75% of the data being removed
(k) less than 90% of the data being removed
(l) no matter what the loss of data"

(I understand that (a) actually means heavily changing the implementation/backup plan 
in the lines of having multiple-licensed data to coexist, and that (l) is lunatic, but 
I wanted to give full range of options.)

Then the median of acceptable loss should be calculated, and announced (and
used) as a limit at which we abort license change implementation plan (and
rethink what to do) instead of proceeding with data removal/archiving.

Matija

[1] Message-ID: <20091210003726.GA15684 at eagle102.home.lan>

-- 
Opinions above are GNU-copylefted.




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