[talk-au] Going separate ways

[Richard Fairhurst]

I think it's reasonably obvious by now that the two sides in this debate 
aren't ever going to be reconciled.

It's not exclusively an .au problem, but it is mostly. If you look at 
any of the analysis done recently, Australia simply hasn't taken to 
ODbL+CT in the way that other countries have. To take the count from 
odbl.de of "nodes last edited by users who have accepted" (which gives a 
rough summary of recent activity):

	Germany 90.1%
	Great Britain 89.1%
	France 96.8%
	North America 96.4%
	Russia 97.2%
	Australia 48.4%

That's pretty stark.

Steve and Sam might have between them put their finger on why it's 
different 
(http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-au/2011-July/008268.html). I'm 
sure personalities also have something to do with it, as they do with 
any open source project. Regardless, it's unquestionable that it _is_ 
different in .au.

So, I think, we need to get away from this idea that a fork is a bad 
thing. It isn't. There are two divergent communities, and it doesn't do 
either side any good to try and hold them together when they're so opposed.

FOSM appears to be slowly becoming established, both technically and as 
a brand, and that's good. Benefiting from all the OSM code and 
ecosystem, plus the free gov.au data, is a pretty good headstart for a 
"new" forked project and I'd be amazed if it couldn't succeed given that.

So please, let's stop hitting each other over the head with this. OSM 
can exist with ODbL, FOSM can exist with CC-BY-SA; people will choose 
which one to contribute to (or, indeed, both). OSM people can leave FOSM 
people alone without badgering them to agree; FOSM people can leave OSM 
people alone without criticism of the path they've chosen. OSM people 
needn't invade the FOSM mailing lists and vice versa. Let's concentrate 
on making a success of our own project, not on doing the other one down.

cheers
Richard