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

andrzej zaborowski balrogg at gmail.com
Sun Jul 18 23:06:34 BST 2010


Hi,

On 18 July 2010 19:54, SteveC <steve at asklater.com> wrote:
> And anyway, you're comparing it to an absolute situation of status quo - that we all just hum along on CCBYSA because nearmap won't work with us. We can't do that. We all (well nearly all) know that CCBYSA just doesn't work, so you're saying no to the ODbL, no to PD too (because nearmap wont like that either as its not SA)... You can't go through life being a big bag of 'no' like this because nothing will ever happen. The LWG is trying to make a bunch of reasonable decisions that will inevitably disenfranchise some people. They are trying to minimise the number of people disenfranchised and the amount of it, and if you just say 'no' to everything you just look like an unreasonable extremist and risk nobody spending time on your otherwise reasonable points.

Maybe when you say ODbL you mean ODbL + CT, but I'll just point out
that John didn't seem to oppose ODbL, perhaps the opposite, just
opposing to the text of the CT.  The CT is also what nearmap is not
accepting and what I would have trouble accepting.

If the LWG is trying to minimise the number of people unhappy with the
changeover process, they're doing a bad job (see poll below).  The
have not asked (that I know) the community on the mailing list whether
the CT should make the OSMF the licensing body and make the authors
grant these rights to the OSMF.  To any arguments that rose so far
about this point, I've only seen the members of LWG explain for
umpteenth time why they think it's important for OSMF to have these
rights.  Some people agree that it would be good for OSMF to be able
to change the license in the future, some people don't.  But nearly
nobody thinks that this is so important as to sacrifice for example
the ability to import ODbL licensed databases, and basically remove
the SA of our license as John points out.  Here's an old poll (not
very widely publicised) that shows this and which I've never seen the
LWG respond to: http://doodle.com/5ey98xzwcz69ytq7

Cheers




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