[OSM-talk] Let's prepare to Fork OSM to a CCBYSA 2.0continuation

[Serge Wroclawski]

On Sun, Aug 22, 2010 at 9:13 AM, John F. Eldredge <john at jfeldredge.com> wrote:
> My largest complaint is that, if you click "yes", you not only are agreeing to the current new license, but you are also agreeing in advance to any future license changes, without being able to know what those new license terms will be.  It is the equivalent to voting someone into office as "President for life".

Except that it's not.

1. There isn't one OSM

The OSMF is a membership driven organization. It's democratic and
membership is open to anyone. The organization took votes for the
current license plan and there's no reason to believe it won't do so
in the future.

2. Much more stringent requirements are put on lots of projects

You may have heard of the GNU project. Are you aware that all
contributors to GNU project must sign over not just license
agreements, but copyright assignments?

Just this week a new project came along called OpenStack, and all
contributors must sign a license agreement to the central body.

This is normal and there are very good reasons these organizations do
what they do.

3. You can always fork later

I've yet to hear many objections to the OBdL other than "I don't like change".

The ODbL is a more solid license. It's a better license in pretty much
every way.

But should the OSMF be taken over by green brain-sucking aliens, you
can always fork in the future.


- Serge