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

[Sami Dalouche]

Hi,

I am a complete outsider regarding the licensing debate (and, to be
honest, to the whole OSM project... I barely started mapping a few
hiking trails).

That being said, here is the main thing I wonder about :

**Is the license change a real choice or a kind of legal obligation ?**

The reason I ask is because, by looking at this thread, I feel like some
people view it as important, and others see how depressing it is for the
mapping community... But do we have the choice ?

If the move is for pure theoretical, GNU/Stallman-like ideology, then it
is likely to create way more damage than it would save. 
However, if the move is about saving the project from a legal
perspective, then it's probably better to start tackling the issue now
rather than having a court shut down the project 5 years from now when
most of the planet is mapped...

regards,
Sami Dalouche

On Mon, 2010-07-19 at 03:46 +1000, John Smith wrote:
> On 19 July 2010 03:36, SteveC <steve at asklater.com> wrote:
> > Why? Because the project is growing very fast and attracting more data all the time. If Google or Nearmap don't want to play ball that's fine - just look at the hundreds of other companies and organisations that do, like Bing and MapQuest's announcements at SOTM for example.
> 
> Nearmap isn't dictating any terms, other than you can only use their
> data under a share alike license so no need to lump them in with
> Google. However I have a fairly good idea how much information has
> been added in regional areas that wouldn't exist otherwise.
> 
> > I agree it might be bad in the short term that we lose some aerial imagery (but I posit that would only happen because you give nearmap the impression that the community will do whatever they say, if you ask them to join us from the position that this is the direction we're going, I posit they would be more positive). But in the longer term I guarantee we'll have lots of other sources of data and imagery. It will be a temporary setback, even if it happens.
> 
> You go on and on about how if 50% disappear wait a short time and
> it'll magically appear within a short period of time, I call BS, if
> the tiger data was dumped from OSM how long exactly would it take to
> regather it? How demoralising would it be on the people that fixed up
> the tiger data? Combined with people that don't respond or don't agree
> it would set the Aussie community back to the stone age effectively,
> and it will actively turn away new contributors because they won't
> want the same thing to happen to their efforts.
> 
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