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

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Michael Barabanov wrote:
> A poll could be something like: "Would you find a it acceptable if OSMF 
> relicensed the whole dataset to ODBL without any data loss".

It should really be "Would you find it acceptable if OSMF relicensed the 
whole dataset to ODbL without asking for consent from individual 
contributors, thereby making sure that there is no data loss, but 
disregarding individuals who might be against the change?"

If OSMF were to do that, they would likely be sued by a number of 
principled objectors; we'd have to factor in a legal budget to deal with 
that. It should not be too much because those legal advisers that have 
told us that the CC-BY-SA would likely not hold in court would simply 
have to tell the judge the same ;)

Problem is, the principled objectors could also decline to sue OSMF and 
instead threaten to sue users of OSM data that contains their 
contributions. *We* believe such threats to be empty, but consider our 
users - one of the reasons for ODbL is to achieve a legal certainty 
about using our data. Would all this not lead to people *again* shying 
away from OSM for fear of some poisoned bits of data?

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"