[OSM-talk] Suggestion to add SA clause to CT section 3, describing "free and open license"

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Peteris Krisjanis wrote:
> I'm sorry, but idea that PD fans holds all license question hostage
> and therefore CT is needed is stupidest thing I ever heard during my
> entire life. 

Nobody said anything about holding anything hostage. There's lots of 
parties to this agreement and everyone has to give something away for 
this to work. This is about finding a way forward together, not against 
each other.

There are many people who have one problem or another with the license 
change. There are some who say "I will say no if there is the danger of 
even one node being lost in the process!". There are some who say "I 
will say no unless produced works are made share-alike!". There are some 
who say "I will say no if there is any chance that the project ever goes 
PD even if the vast majority of contributors want it!". There are some 
who say "I will say no if the PD option is not properly considered!"

You might like to put all these people in one room and have them battle 
it out, and whoever wins is right and all the others are "stupid". But 
this is not how things work; we're trying to build a consensus here 
where we get *all* these people to say: "Ok, this new license is perhaps 
not 100% what I wanted but it is the right way forward".

This is not about one side winning and one side losing.

> Also creating license AND then creating CT which practically destroys
> idea of license just because there part of community which disagrees

I think you should read my message(s) again. Nobody said that the CT 
were created "just because" some people didn't like the license. (In 
fact I have yet to meet someone who says he *likes* the license - 
wouldn't we all be happy if we could spend our time with other things?)

> Make your choice - is it SA/Attribution, or it is PD then. You can't have
> both, period. 

First of all, this is not generally true because the idea of dual 
licensing does exist. We have chosen not to investigate this further at 
this time, and we are preparing to change to a license that is 
SA/Attribution for data. This move has my support. Still that does in no 
way mean that you should not create an environment were future license 
changes, if deemed necessary by a vast majority of the community, are 
less painful than what we have today.

> Even more - having so much problem with this change, do
> you really expect to change license *again* in the future?

Exactly. There is never going to be another license change like the one 
we are seeing now, where every contributor has to be asked individually. 
The only viable future path for license changes is via the CT.

> All this CT farce comes from having unrealistic expectations about
> future - and for that you are ready to loose quite significant amount
> of data.

I think you are getting all worked up because you have misunderstood the 
situation. ODbL is a completely new license which has never been used on 
a grand scale. It would be utterly negligent to *not* have a safeguard 
in place that lets us move away from ODbL without having to go through 
all this again.

> p.s. I still want to hear official word from Steve or anyone about CT
> Section 3, even if it is no. But please without "PD crowd is mighty"
> crap

You have used "stupid" twice in this post, and now "crap". Please mind 
your language or find someone else to discuss your ideas with.

Also, I think that you have already been told - yesterday, by Andy Allan 
- that the License Working Group is quite busy and may take several 
weeks to respond. However I should not be surprised if the answer you 
receive from them will also tell you about the need to find solutions 
that the whole community can work with; if you discount this idea as 
"crap" beforehand then there might not be much sense in answering at all.

Bye
Frederik