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

Anthony osm at inbox.org
Sun Dec 6 03:05:25 GMT 2009


On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 9:43 PM, John Smith <deltafoxtrot256 at gmail.com>wrote:

> 2009/12/6 Anthony <osm at inbox.org>:
> >> Click through type agreements have already been deemed as
> >> unenforceable,
> >
> > Can you provide me with a few links to back that up (off-list or on the
> > legal list if you think it's too off-topic)?  To my knowledge the
> > enforceability is spotty and unclear.
>
> Trying to find the judgement, was a few years ago now.
>

Might want to check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click-through_license .  A
quick scan finds one case where the license was found unenforceable (because
it was unconscionable), and several where it was found enforceable.

I'm not sure what you consider a "click through type agreement", but if
you're including websites which have you click on some equivalent of "I
agree", I can't imagine that could possible be found unenforceable.  Without
it, e-commerce could never exist.

> In any case, I see little chance of the switch being made under the terms
> > outlined.  Between people who refuse the Contributor Terms and people who
> > just never respond, there's likely going to be *way* too much to delete.
>
> What about people unable to change the terms of their contributions
> due to being contributed by governments?
>

Yeah, them too.  But I read earlier that only 10% of contributors are
currently active.  What's going to be kept?  Besides the public domain
imports (like TIGER), I can't see it being more than 25%.  And that means
any fork that springs up will have 4 times as much data to start with.  Am I
underestimating the amount of data that will be kept?  Am I being naive in
believing that the data from people who don't respond is really going to be
removed?  I honestly can't see how this switch can possibly succeed.

Unlike some others, I'm not angry about it, though.  Mr. Lamping analogized
earlier about a gun being to the heads of the contributors.  But a better
analogy would be that the OSMF is sticking a gun to its own head when it
says "agree to the changes or we'll pull the trigger".
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20091205/48deba8e/attachment.html>


More information about the talk mailing list