[Rebuild] Idea for ODbL transition strategy

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 02/01/12 15:00, errt at gmx.de wrote:
> There's no difference to your approach if you want to conserve most of
> the history. If you want to keep the history as it is, you will have to
> flag lots of historic versions invisible because they contain data
> derived from tainted data.

Yes, that's my plan.

> This would keep the history intact, but still
> falsify what is delivered as history view: It will show that version Z
> followed version X with the following changes, but without the tainted
> version Y that had been there before.

No, I was thinking of putting in a placeholder that would say "version Y 
by user A would have been here but I cannot tell you what it is because 
it isn't license compatible". The user could then - if he really wants - 
go to a different source to find out what exactly version Y of the 
object was about, or even use the special-ccbysa-only call to find out. 
(I do have the feeling that not everyone is happy with a 
special-ccbysa-only API call so maybe that should not be offered even if 
the data is there.)

>>> P.S.: I still think it's a major question whether we want to keep but
>>> hide non-ODbL versions or whether to drop them completely for the sake
>>> of a smaller, clean database and no needs for any patches for holes or
>>> invisible versions. We should probably have a voting on that fundamental
>>> decision, at the best a community vote.

>> I don't think this is a good idea.

> Well, someone will have to make a decision. In a community driven
> project, this should be the community if possible.

It requires considerable expertise and overview to evaluate these 
options. Only people who understand the consequences of a decision 
should be allowed to participate in it. Everyone is free to come join 
the discussion, but I doubt that we should make an effort to explain the 
situation to Joe Average Mapper who doesn't even know what a database is 
and ask them what they would like.

This is not a democracy. I think there are perhaps 20 people in all of 
OSM who are willing and able to contribute to this, and these will decide.

If, on this list, we find that we have a series of options that are 
equally suitable for something, we could a kind of straw poll for people 
on talk@ or so, just getting an idea what is important to them and what 
not. Questions that we put out on talk would however not be "do you 
think the database should still contain cc-by-sa objects or not" because 
that is of no significance to them; questions we put to them would have 
to be about things they actually see when they use the API.

Bye
Frederik