[OSM-talk] OSM license change: A license to kill? -> How to make a nightmare come true!

Russ Nelson russ at cloudmade.com
Wed Mar 4 16:42:36 GMT 2009


On Mar 4, 2009, at 2:33 AM, Ulf Lamping wrote:
> Simply saying "we're the OSMF board and we know what's good for you"  
> is
> a very, very bad idea to build trust!

But that's not what Steve said.  Steve is trying to teach you how  
lawyers work.  I've watched lawyers work, as a fly on the wall.  They  
work very much like hackers, throwing ideas off each other, but  
they're doing it in an incompatible space.  Unless you've got  
expertise in that space (as Gerv and I have, and maybe others), then  
you need to be careful about what you ask for.

> Hopefully you know and trust the lawyers, foundation, whoever, ...
> involved. WE PROBABLY DON'T KNOW THEM SO WHY SHOULD WE MAGICALLY TRUST
> THEM?!?

You can't.  There is no magic wand to create trust.  Only through time  
and repeated interaction can you learn to trust somebody.  And if  
you've been around for more than a year, you've had that time and  
those interactions -- if you've chosen to pay attention.  If you  
expect to participate in the process afterwards, then I think your  
expectations are off.

> There were NO!!! introduction of the players involved, no ideas how to
> build trust in the community ... (e.g. what's the relation to the OSI
> initiative?).

Well, the Open Source Initiative is only starting to dip its toe into  
Open Data.  Clearly it's a complicated topic, especially when it comes  
to "source code" and "derived works", and "reciprocal licenses" (I  
prefer "reciprocal" to "virus".  Reciprocating is good; having a virus  
is not).

--
Russ Nelson - http://community.cloudmade.com/blog - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:RussNelson
russ at cloudmade.com - http://openstreetmap.org/user/RussNelson

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