[OSM-talk] Not-properly-Open-but-called-Open

[Richard Fairhurst]

Frederik Ramm wrote:
> We cannot, and do not want to, trademark the words "open", "free" and
> the like, but I think we could be a little bit more assertive about whom
> we consider to be a kindred spirit and who is doing his own thing, and
> apply the tiniest amount of pressure for people to upgrade from (b) to (a).
>
> I think many of us will be surprised how many "cool OSM projects"
> actually fall into the (b) category.
 >
> To make it absolutely clear, this is not about forcing anyone to do
> anything, about licenses or anything - it is just about saying loud
> and clear what we like, and giving those who do what we like a pat on
> the back while telling those who don't that we would respect their
> great work even more if they were open like us.

Hm, maybe. But YMMV on "what we like".

In my view, what matters is someone's _overall_ contribution to OSM, not 
their unquestioning adherence to the doctrine of "free".

Faced with one person who makes an enormous contribution to OSM, but 
chooses to keep one aspect of their contributions closed-source; and 
another whose main contribution is a lot of wiki voting, but has sent 
two preset patches, assiduously annotated with some inordinate licence 
preamble in capital letters - well, I couldn't criticise the former or 
deny them any "respect". And "applying pressure" rather smacks of that 
"Proper attribution" lynch mob.

cheers
Richard




Hey, I managed a whole post about "Not-properly-Open" without mentioning 
the GPL. ...oh crap.