[OSM-talk] License plan

[Simon Ward]

On Tue, Mar 03, 2009 at 03:28:10PM +0100, Pieren wrote:
> It's very confusing now about who, how and what is deleted with the
> license change. I would appreciate if someone could answer the
> following questions:

My take:

> - do you delete only data from contributors who explicitly say 'no' to
> the new licence or also if you have no response ?

Delete both.

> what is the argument to consider an absence of response to be a 'yes'
> or 'no' ?

The main thing is, no contributor, unless they have specifically stated
otherwise, has (or in some cases, can) assign the rights to OSM, and OSM
cannot just assume rights other than those given by the licence they
were contributed under.

Some users have declared their contributions to be in the public domain
(or as close as law permits).  Whether or not they respond, I think it’s
safe to assume their data can be distributed under the terms of the new
licence (I’d hope we’d be polite and ask anyway).

> - do you delete data from big contributors only or also all small or
> single contributions ?

All data incompatible with the new licence, large or small.

> - if you decide to delete contributions and those contributions are
> only part of the history of objects, do you rollback  to a previous
> version of these objects ?

Rollback to the last version before any changes incompatible with the
new licence are made.

There is the idea floating around that modifications to existing data
are insubstantial, and successive contributions could potentially be
kept without issue, but I think it is safest to remove them.

Maybe if a user responds “no”, a further page could ask whether or not
they agree with their modifications to other peoples’ data being
used under the terms of the new licence.

> remove completely the objects if the contributor is the creator or the
> last modifier ?

Remove the object completely if the contributor is the creator.

If the contributor is the last modifier, revert to the revision before
as above.

> only if the contributor is the single contributor on the whole history
> of the object ?

Remove the object completely.

> - if the objects you delete are part of a relation, do you keep the
> relation at the end even if all members have to be deleted ?
> or you also delete the relation in this case ?

I am not sure there is much point in keeping the relation.  If someone
needs to use a relation to describe the same thing they can always
create a new one.

There is another question here:  If the contributor created a relation
and added ways and nodes appropriately, do you delete the relation even
when it includes references to objects from other contributors?

I think, to be safe, you do, but I also feel there is a looser coupling
if the relation only relates objects compatible with the new licence.

> what happen if another contributor (who accepted the new license)
> added/changed properties of a relation where all members have to be
> deleted ?

I still don’t think there is much point in keeping the relation.

> - if someone says 'no' to the new license and wrote a bot, do you also
> delete the bot contributions ?

Yes, unless they say otherwise.  It may well be that the bot author
feels that, while they do not agree to the new licence for their own
modifications, those made by the bot may be insubstantial (e.g. spelling
corrections), and say “no” for their own edits, and “yes” for their
bot’s edits.

> - after deletion, do you keep the trace in the history of other
> related objects ?

In the interests of keeping it clean, any reverts made due to
incompatible changes would not be kept in the history.

A backup can be kept of the old database of CC-by-sa compatible data.
It might come in handy if some non‐responders pipe up and say “yes”, or
the “no” voters change their minds.

> will it be possible for someone else to revert the deletion through
> Potlatch for instance ?

It shouldn’t be.

Simon
-- 
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a
simple system that works.—John Gall
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 197 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20090303/f6a1e898/attachment.pgp>