[OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[James Livingston]

On 14/07/2010, at 10:28 PM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
> I'm no expert on this sort of thing, but there are probably a lot of
> well known pitfalls to avoid when trying to run an inclusive
> international project in many languages. I'd think having English-only
> discussion at a set time convenient for Europeans would be pretty high
> on that list.

I don't know if you'll get out of being English-only, since like it or not it is the main working language of OSM (as with many open projects on the Internet). Using any other language is probably going to exclude even more people.

One thing that I've seen done in other projects is rotate between three meeting times eight hours apart. So for example one meeting would be 1800 UTC, the next 0200 UTC and the next 1000 UTC.


>> Further to what Frederik has said, there's a couple more points that
>> are important. The OSMF receives legal advice on matters relating to
>> the license change, and as far as I'm aware they are forbidden from
>> making the legal advice public.

I can't speak for them, but I would guess it's more inadvisable than forbidden (with respect to licensing anyway). If you get advice saying "we believe that sections A, B and C will hold up in court, section D probably would, E should unless XYZ happens and we don't know about F", then telling everyone that means anyone trying to get around it knows about the potential holes you found.

Of course, people using the license will want to know about that kind of thing, so it's a trade-off.


> I.e. can the legal advice only be shared among people actually on the
> LWG conference call, and not all OSMF members?

Who can be on the call - LWG members, any OSMF member, or anyone involved in the project? Actually, I can't even find how you get on the LWG in the first place.