[OSM-talk] OSMF: The people you are going to hand over your OSM data ...

[John Smith]

2009/12/7 Graham Seaman <graham at theseamans.net>:
> This is the aspect of the whole thing I find most worrying too: this
> signover of rights to a centralised body makes external attack much more
> possible. Is it really necessary for the OSMF to have both functions
> (management and rights ownership)? For example, I would be happier
> signing over any rights I personally hold to the FSF, which has a much
> longer track record of being unassailable, with the FSF required to
> relinquish all responsibility to the OSMF as long as the data is kept
> free. An attack on the OSMF would then become much less likely, being
> pointless.

So ask for a clause that "ownership" is transferred to another org in
the event that OSMF is "bought out" or no longer has the best
interests of it's contributors, but it's not uncommon to assign rights
to an org, as you point out the FSF has been doing it for a long time,
why was there any reason to trust them in the begining?