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

[Michael Barabanov]

Thanks for the explanation.  BTW, I think "pirate" is quite an overstatement
in this context. The proposed license is still a free/open license.  Plus I
kind of suspect that most contributors care about potential data loss more
than CC license vs ODBL license, but I may be wrong.  Still, let me advance
the "rotten" line of thought a bit. Not that I'm advocating for anything.

1. OSMF does change the license without any regard; people who are against
ODBL get pissed off and stop contributing (lost for OSM?). No data loss from
the database.
2. OSMF does not do that; contributions of people who are against ODBL are
deleted, people who are against ODBL stop contributing anyway.  Potential
data loss.  We've no idea how big, there're technical issues for identifying
the data to be removed and actually implementing removal, and there seems to
be an overall sense of uncertainty until the whole thing is resolved.
3. Of course, there's a third possibility where everyone just loves ODBL and
so it's a win-win. Wouldn't that be nice.

On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 11:39 PM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
>
> John Smith wrote:
>
>> On 17 July 2010 13:07, Michael Barabanov <michael.barabanov at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Consider two cases:
>>>
>>> 1. Current license does not cover the OSM data (I think that's the OSMF
>>> view).  In this  case, OSMF can just change to ODBL without asking
>>> anyone.
>>> 2. Current license does cover the OSM data. Then there's no need to
>>> change.
>>>
>>> Where's the issue?
>>>
>>
>> I made that exact point above some time ago and people umm'd and arr'd
>> and didn't give me a straight answer...
>>
>
> The answer is quite simply actually.
>
> For a long time we assumed that the current license did indeed work, and we
> essentially told everyone who signed up that their data was protected. They
> trusted us and assumed we had chosen the license well.
>
> We now know that anybody, at least in most jurisdictions and if he has a
> decent-sized legal budget and has not respect for ethics (i.e. is
> sufficiently evil), can effectively use our data as if it were unprotected.
> In other words, we were wrong, we chose the wrong license out of ignorance.
> Shit happens.
>
> This does not mean that *we* should throw our sense of what's right and
> what's wrong over board and become evil. Taking the data now and relicensing
> it without asking those whom we have, for years, assured that their data was
> safe under the license we chose for them would amount to betraying these
> people, and would not form the basis of trust we need to continue to build a
> good community.
>
> It is beyond me how anyone can even suggest that we effectively pirate our
> own data and use this as a basis for a healthy project.
>
> No "umm" and "arr" from my side - just plain disbelief at such a rotten
> idea.
>
> Bye
> Frederik
>
> --
> Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20100717/30b794b7/attachment.html>