[OSM-talk] Voluntary re-licensing begins

[David Groom]

To all contributors.

I'm sorry to have to urge you to not agree to the CT terms, but please 
consider the points below.  Please note that this is not a question of 
whether ODBL is the right way to proceed, but is merely comments on the 
current contributor terms which you are being asked to agree to.

1)   The last sentence of clause (1) of the contributor terms requires YOU 
to have EXPLICIT permission from the rights holder.  Please consider if you 
have this EXPLICIT permission, if you do not have it then  you CAN NOT agree 
to the contributor terms

2) There is a large amount of contributors who have traced imagery from 
sources such as Yahoo, NearMap, or who have used data sources which requires 
CC-BY-SA  .  If you have used any of these sources , and you have not had 
express permission from the rights holder to re-licence under the current 
terms of the Contributor Terms, then you CAN NOT agree to the contributor 
terms

Regards

David Groom

> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Mike Collinson" <mike at ayeltd.biz>
> To: "OpenStreetMap Talk" <talk at openstreetmap.org>
> Sent: Thursday, August 12, 2010 9:18 AM
> Subject: [OSM-talk] Voluntary re-licensing begins
>
>
>> As promised, and long awaited, the next phase of the OSM License Upgrade 
>> has arrived. Phase 2 - Existing Contributor Voluntary Re-licensing  [1] 
>> has begun, and you may indicate your acceptance of the new Contributor 
>> Terms for your existing OSM API account.  To accept the terms visit 
>> http://openstreetmap.org/user/terms, (you may be asked to login first), 
>> or your user settings page.
>>
>> Please note that OpenStreetMap is not changing the license on any 
>> published data at this point.  Existing contributors are being asked to 
>> permit re-licensing of their data in the future when it makes sense to do 
>> so.
>>
>> There is no decline button, and no obligation to answer yet.  Existing 
>> Contributor Voluntary Re-licensing is for those who wish to accept the 
>> terms and get on with mapping.
>>
>> We'll be publishing which users have accepted so that we can all see the 
>> progress in terms of users and re-licensed data.
>>
>> We hope that you will accept the new Contributor Terms [2] and ODbL for 
>> each of your user accounts if you have more than one.
>>
>>
>>
>> ** Why are we doing it like this? **
>>
>>
>> What ifs, what ifs. The key is clearly to reduce these. Those that simply 
>> want to get on mapping and accept that we won't doing anything daft, can 
>> sign up.    Those that are worried about data loss and that the OSMF will 
>> make a stupid decision,  can wait and see.  We'll show how much of the 
>> database is potentially covered by the ODbL. We've got some help on 
>> modelling that, and we'll aim for at least a weekly update if not daily. 
>> We'll also make all the data available needed to calculate that, so if 
>> you want to try a different metric or just see what is happening in your 
>> local area, everything will be transparent.
>>
>> If you support the share-alike concept, I urge you to accept the new 
>> Contributor Terms which provides for a coherent Attribution, Share-Alike 
>> license written especially for databases.  If you are a Public Domain 
>> license supporter, we are divided as a community on which is best and I 
>> do urge you to give this one a good try.  The Contributor Terms are 
>> expressly written to allow us to come back in future years and see what 
>> is best without all this fuss about procedure.  And if you'd just really 
>> like all this hoo-haa to go away and get back to mapping, well, please 
>> say yes.
>>
>>
>>
>> ** Some supporting notes:  **
>>
>>
>> () The key thing is that there are about 12,500 contributors who have 
>> contributed over 98% of the pre-May data.
>>
>> () I personally really, really want to get a coherent license in place so 
>> that my mapping efforts are more widely used. I also really, really don't 
>> want us as a community to shoot ourselves in the head and divide.  I 
>> pledge to continue working with *both* objectives in mind.
>>
>> () The License Working Group will not recommend switching over the 
>> license if data loss is unreasonable [3]. We will issue a formal 
>> statement to that effect and are attempting to define better what 
>> "unreasonable" means. A totally quantitative criteria is extremely 
>> difficult to define ahead of actually seeing what specific problems may 
>> arise. But I understand the concern that we are tempted to do something 
>> wild.
>>
>> () The License Working Group will ask the OSMF board to issue a similar 
>> statement.
>>
>> () We are working to create a process whereby we can model on a regular 
>> basis how much of the OSM database is covered by ODbL and how much not. 
>> We will make all the data needed to do that public so that anyone can 
>> analyse using their own metrics. Work on this is active and being 
>> discussed on the dev mailing list. You will need:
>>
>> - An ordinary planet dump.
>> - Access to history data. A public 18GB "history dump" is available 
>> http://planet.openstreetmap.org/full-experimental/full-planet-100801.osm.bz2. 
>> The intent is to make this available on a regular basis with difffs. A 
>> full re-generation takes several days.
>> - A list of userids of who has and has not accepted the license. Work in 
>> progress.
>>
>> () A final vote on whether to switch or not remains an option. But let us 
>> see first if "data loss" really is an issue and what the specific 
>> problems might be.
>>
>> Regards to all,
>> Mike