[OSM-talk] License plan

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

wer-ist-roger wrote:
> But we could lose even more! The ones that don't agree on the change might 
> start a fork and that would be the worst thing that could happen. 

That's why we talk to each other before taking the next step. If people 
feel rushed or left out then they are likely to fork; if we work hard to 
include as many people as possible - sometimes a symbolic gesture is 
enough to make people feel that their concerns are heard, sometimes the 
wording of the license needs to be adapted -, then we might just get 
this through.

> And one more thing. How can we be sure that the coming up license suites the 
> project? I don't want to have this discussion in 3 years again.

The ODbL has a provision for automatic upgrades to later versions. It is 
currently unclear (a) who decides what a "later version" is, (b) whether 
we can convince everybody to trust them enough, and (c) how we can be 
sure that *if* we require a change to the license, a matching "later 
version" will be provided by them.

But if these things are sorted out then we should be reasonably safe...

Bye
Frederik