[Osmf-talk] Results of OSMF Member Vote

[Matija Nalis]

On Thu, Jan 07, 2010 at 08:26:00PM +0000, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
> 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.

<cut>

> ....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. 

Thanks for the history lesson, Richard. I was perhaps misunderstood, I did
not meant to say that the issue was never risen before (which I'm aware it
did), but only that (once a decision has been made that we must move from
CC-BY-SA to something else) LWG itself ("they" I was referring in the
paragraph) were never tasked with choosing PD or copyleft (but only with
drafting best copyleft), and hence the fact that they only choose the best
copyleft (share-alike) license, and NOT the best licence for OSM.

I think that is a big difference (after all, in '05 SteveC though CC-BY-SA
was a good license for the task, which turned out to be wrong). I think many
people who don't care much while the license stays as it is, would actually
care *to what* it will be changed if the change is inevitable.

> 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.

But the poll [1] actually does not say that. It says that ~31% would accept
ODbL, and that additional ~44% already thinks their data *already IS* PD
(that is, that the copyright/database laws does not apply in case of OSM
data and so nobody needs their permission to relicense it any way the like,
including ODbL or any other license).

How much of that ~31% that accepts ODbL (or the additional ~14%) would also
accept relicense to PD was not asked in that poll (which is a pity). So only
hard numbers we can draw from that poll (assuming it is representative of
general OSM contributors, of course) are:

- if we were to relicense to ODbL today, acceptance rate would be between
  74,34% and 86,57% (that is, *guaranteed* loss[2] would be between 13.43% 
  and 25.66%)

- if we were to relicense to PD today, acceptance rate would be between
  43.65% and 100% (that is, *guaranteed* loss[2] would be between 0% and
  56.35%)

That is due the way poll was constructed. So we see PD has both better 
"best way" (nothing is lost! while for ODbL we would lose at least ~13%)
and worse "worst way" (~56% is lost as opposed for "only" ~25% for ODbL).

Now according to other stuff I have seen, I would tend to guess that this
loss percentage for PD would be much closer to 0% than to the other end (and
in any case less loss than ODbL), but I cannot statistically prove it (not
with this poll). It's just that it seems to me that vast majority of the
that 31% are more of "LWG seem like a nice people, so I guess ODbL is good
too" than of "Give me ODbL or give me death!" stance.

> 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!

As I said, I'm aware of the issue being brought up before; it's just that I
feel that once a decision was made that license WILL be changed (which was
relatively recently?), the official poll (at least of OSMF, if not of all
OSM contributors) should've been conducted to see what the people would
prefer - PD or copyleft (and proceed with finding best copyleft only if
copyleft was in fact found to be preferred).

As of preferences; I myself am currently mostly in the camp that is of the
mood "if it works, don't try to fix it" (as the problems with CC-BY-SA seem
much less to me than the problems that will befall us if we try to change
the license in any way -- CC0 *or* ODbL).

But *if* we are dead set to change it (which I think should be reconsidered
right now, or at least thresholds set - see my post about a poll for "how
much data loss is acceptable" [3]), then I too would prefer CC0 (or other
PD-alike license) as you would.

[1] http://doodle.com/feqszqirqqxi4r7w

[2] loss of users, not necessarily the loss of data, which could be less or
    more (which depends of how much each user contributed, and how much
    his/her data interleaves the work of the others etc)

[3] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/2009-December/000756.html 

-- 
Opinions above are GNU-copylefted.