[OSM-talk] [Announce] OSMF license change vote has started

[Kai Krueger]

Ulf Lamping wrote:
> <div class="moz-text-flowed" style="font-family: -moz-fixed">Tom Hughes 
> schrieb:
>> On 05/12/09 22:44, Ulf Lamping wrote:
>>> Tom Hughes schrieb:
>>>
>>>> Polling the OSMF members is just the first stage - there will another
>>>> vote later when all contributors will be asked whether they want to
>>>> relicense.
>>>
>>> With a gun at their head: "Refuse: After the migration (currently 26th
>>> February 2010), your contributions will not be included in ODbL licensed
>>> downloads and you will not be able to continue contributing.".
>>
>> My understanding is that after all contributors have been invited to 
>> agree to relicensing the board will make a decision about whether to 
>> go ahead which will obviously have to take into account the proportion 
>> of contributors who have agreed to relicense.
> 
> So translated: If you do not agree to what the OSMF wants, the OSMF will 
> remove the data that you have collected over the last years. Maybe there 
> are too many not willing to change, then we have to talk again.

No, I don't think that is a fair representation. Yes, the motion that 
will be proposed is "Do you agree to relicense to ODbL under the 
contributor terms", but to say you have no "power" in this vote is 
incorrect. In fact you have way more influence than in any normal vote, 
as the vote has to be close to unanimous as otherwise there will be far 
to much data loss as that the change will go ahead. Please trust the 
OSMF board that they have the best intent for the OSM data and will I am 
sure thus not allow that anywhere close to half of the data will get 
deleted. So the power of the no sayers is way bigger than in any normal 
vote!

This initial vote of the OSMF is as I would see it an initial straw pole 
to see if in at least this group of OSMers we can get sufficient support 
to make it work before asking ten thousands of people if they would 
agree to a license change. After that is still the real vote for or 
against going ODbL.

This is the same as in any other process, where a few dedicated and very 
capable people spend years of hard work trying to find the best 
compromise with everyone else  being able to give input and feedback 
through out the whole process which is taken into consideration. At the 
end of this process there is a vote, do you agree or not. This seems 
like the most reasonable process and the only one that has a chance to 
get any decision made in a 100 thousand strong community with very 
diverse interests.

> 
> Don't you see that this is a complete inappropriate way to deal with an 
> open community?

No, as the previous process has always been pretty open with discussions 
on talk, legal-talk, the wiki and some of the mailing lists. How much 
more open do you want it to be with out spamming 150000 people who are 
mostly not interested in the process of the license on every little detail?

> 
> Regards, ULFL

Kai


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