[OSM-talk] License plan

[Ulf Lamping]

Frederik Ramm schrieb:
> Hi,
> 
> Richard Fairhurst wrote:
>> There's three categories to consider relating to existing data.
> 
>> 1. People who have made edits and can't be contacted. 
>> 2. People who don't like ODbL and withdraw their data. 
>> 3. Large organisations. 
> 
> I have a fourth category to add:
> 
> 4. People who don't dislike ODbL per se but dislike the manner in which 
> it was brought about, and thus feel rushed/excluded. People who make 
> sensible suggestions for improvement but see their suggestions brushed 
> away or simply ignored because this would just delay the license release 
> (which seems to be planned for 28th March), or people who have 
> legitimate concerns and find them answered with an "I don't know" from 
> the legal counsel and an "we'll press ahead anyway" from OSMF.
> 
> Having a proper process that takes our project members and their 
> concerns seriously, rather than holding a gun to their heads and saying 
> "agree to this license or go away", is not only important for keeping as 
> much data as possible, it is also, in my eyes, a requirement of project 
> ethics.
> 
> I can live with some data being lost. But I would like to avoid press 
> headlines like "20% of OpenStreetMap members quit over license row / 
> Disgruntled mappers say they feel ignored /  Fake SteveC: 'Crisis? What 
> Crisis?'" - I think *that* kind of thing would hurt us more than having 
> to redraw a few villages.

FULL ACK!!!

Personally I am feeling excluded from what's going on behind the scenes 
and I think this is not the way for a project that has "open" in his 
name ...

There were only very few news on talk/talk-de available for such an 
important thing as a license change.


A little bit more respect to the people that actually did the mapping 
work would probably be a very good idea. "We're only loosing 5% of the 
data" is a very, very strange attitude for me. Not because of the data 
but because of the people behind that data.

I must say that this is the first time that I'm seriously thinking about 
to stop my effort with OpenStreetMap completely and I'm feeling very 
sorry about that. But I just won't continue to spend effort if OSM in 
the long run probably ends up as a commercial thing.

You're probably not aware, but with the way the current license 
discussion is done you are spreading a lot of FUD on your own project :-(


Just wanted to let you know how the current actions are received from 
people not being directly involved in legal talk ...

Regards, ULFL