[Osmf-talk] Results of OSMF Member Vote

[Richard Fairhurst]

On 07/01/2010 19:06, Matija Nalis wrote:

> They were however never tasked with finding if share-alike or public
> domain would be better for the project. And that is IMHO more important
> question which should've been asked first.

Hi. You must be new round here (joke).

The share-alike vs public domain argument in OSM is as old as the hills. 
To say the question hasn't been asked is like saying the Atlantic Ocean 
isn't deep. It's not just been asked, it's been discussed to death.

The first mention I can find on the OSM mailing lists is January 2005, 
and OSM was only conceived as an idea in summer 2004. Some guy called 
Matt Amos was talking about it:
	http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2005-January/000214.html

And from then on you couldn't really stop the SA vs PD arguments.
	http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2005-February/000271.html
	http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2005-April/000488.html
	http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2005-May/000641.html

....in which SteveC says: "Would prefer the GPL definition of free to 
BSD's. Basically I slapped CC on it since it was very simple to do. 
Talking about licenses is something that is needed but I'd prefer it to 
be in the past."

There you go. The official story of why OSM has the licence it does. 
Fun, eh? And Matt still hasn't learned to use his shift key.

But I think you're misunderstanding the issue when you say:

 > In short, one could as easily change to CC0 as to ODbL.
 >
 > Only difference is which one the contributors will like more (and by
 > inoffical polls I found and posted, they actually seem to like CC0 more).

In really broad terms: the Doodle poll says 11% don't want to change, 
39% want ODbL, 50% want PD but will agree to ODbL. So if you change to 
PD (or CC0 or whatever), you lose 50% of the data. If you change to ODbL 
you lose 11% of the data.

That is the problem we have always had. And I say that as someone who 
is, and has always been (as you can see from one of the links above ;) 
), a fervent PD supporter. We're not stupid, we have considered this. 
Once or twice!

cheers
Richard