[OSM-talk] New site about the license change

[David Murn]

On Sat, 2010-11-13 at 18:06 -0500, john whelan wrote:
> > The decisions have been made, so it's time to accept them or if you
> don't, to leave.

Maybe I missed something, but when were the decisions made?  Last I
heard, people were still being asked for their opinion.  Did I miss the
announcement of some decision, as Im not subscribed to legal-talk, or
lwg, or whichever mailing list OSMF have decided to be the authority
today?

> Nowhere in my post did I express a view that a change of license is
> bad.  However changes need managing, if we are to come through the
> changes with a working map then we really do need to plan the
> transition.

This works fine, if you own the data in the first place.  I dont think
there's ever been any issue with contributions by individual mappers,
more to do with changing the licence of data that has been graciously
given to us by other groups.

If someone was to approach OSM and say they were using OSM data in their
project, but their projects licence was changing and therefore they'd
like OSM to relicence our data under some licence theyve created for
their own project, what would our reply be?  Would we change our OSM
licence?  Should we expect all the agencies and groups who have given us
data, to change their licences to accomodate us?

> Realistically I would carve the map up into tiles then as soon as a
> tile got to 50% new license then block users adding data under the old
> license to that tile.

That works great where youve got tiles full of lots of data, but what
about in regional areas?  If a mapper wants to contribute data, is OSM
not interested in that data, because the person doesnt wish to accept a
licence?  I see this as having the effect of halving the amount of
contributed data, after we've alerady wiped out half the data that was
there in the first place, which to me sounds like someone slowly trying
to bring down OSM from the inside.

>  Some parts of the world will be ready to move to the new license
> faster than others.

And what about those places that dont move to the new licence?  Do we
simply tell users in those places 'sorry, you either accept our
restrictive licence, or you accept google/yahoo/etc's restrictive
licence'?  Again, this sort of opinion seems like someone trying to
split OSM apart, from the inside.

> I don't see any one coming up with a list of requirements for
> different users of our data and how we keep them happy as we
> transition.

I dont think there is interest in doing that, from the powers-that-be.
Many 'users of our data' have been expressing concerns for many months,
and the only responses Ive seen have been basically 'shut up', 'tell
someone else who cares' or 'its been decided, get over it'.  With this
sort of attitude, is it any wonder that groups that own data are
becoming wary of dealing with the OSM project.

While its great that some small parts of the world have a density of
mappers adequate enough to map local regions extensively, in large parts
of the world, this is simply not really practical.  Compare mapping the
highways in England or France to mapping the highways of Russia, Canada
or Australia.

David

> On 13 November 2010 15:30, Serge Wroclawski <emacsen at gmail.com> wrote:
>         Let's be serious for a moment...
>         
>         I've been involved in the project about two years, and even
>         before
>         then, the license issue has eaten away at the project.
>         
>         Few people have bothered to look at the license objectively.
>         People
>         have used it as an excuse to hate the project, to further
>         their own
>         goals, etc.
>         
>         If people want to fork OSM in software, or in data, they're
>         free to do
>         so. What they shouldn't be free to do is disrupt the project
>         with the
>         constant nagging, complaining, trolling, etc.
>         
>         The decisions have been made, so it's time to accept them or
>         if you
>         don't, to leave.
>         
>         I'm much more interested in mapping than I am having this
>         endless,
>         tiring, pointless debate.
>         
>         - Serge
> 
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