[OSM-talk] Fwd: Fwd: Re: Not-properly-Open-but-called-Open

[Aun Johnsen]

  On Sat, Jan 2, 2010 at 4:59 PM, Nop <ekkehart at gmx.de> wrote:

>
>
> Hi!
>
> Am 02.01.2010 00:23, schrieb Frederik Ramm:
> > 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.
>
> Before we talk about putting projects in categories - this would assume
> that there is an agreement on what those terms mean and what is the
> "right" direction to move into. But as far as I got it from previous
> discussions, opinions are very much divided here, too.
>
> So what does "open" mean:
> - everything is available to look at?
> - everything may be copied and re-used?
> - everybody may participate and change things?
> - all of that?
>
> And what does "free" mean:
> - generally available?
> - free of restrictions on usage?
> - free of cost?
> - available in an open format?
> - a combination of that?
>
> In my personal opinion, PD is free, while OSM is already non-free as it
> puts severe restrictions on the usage of the data.
>
> bye
>        Nop
>
>
>
The term Open have been deluted long ago, and have a lot of different
meanings by now. OSM have also contributed a little to this delition of
Open.

Open = Open Source - Much of the drive behind OSM tools are Open Source,
though there are some that are not quite

Open = Open Terms - Well, CC-BY-SA are not completely an open term, should
it be completely open than we need to move it to PD, thats a different
discussion.

Open = Libre - Freedom have been put into the word open, that is not quite
right, but I will not argue. OSM give me more freedom in how to use the data
than any other crowdsourced projects I know of, and probably have the most
possible ways of using its data.

Open = Free - This is definitely a way of deluting the term. What you pay
for the product have nothing to do with the openness. Same also if we put
adverticement banners on the site in order to gather money to pay for
serverspace or bandwidth, we will still be free of charge for the users
though some people will argue that we are not completely free.

That also goes for the word Free, though it is mostly the same list as Open.
Maybe we should request all derived non-free non-open products to use the
word Available instead of Open or Free? AvailableCycleMap does not delute
the words Open or Free!
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