[OSM-talk] New site about the license change

[Serge Wroclawski]

On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 5:06 PM, David Murn <davey at incanberra.com.au> wrote:

>> back in 2008
>
> Maybe thats the problem then.  Ive been a mapper since 2007 but only
> actively involved in ths communication process since possibly after the
> decision was made.

I wholeheartedly agree that the process has taken far, far too long
and the right answer would have been to switch earlier. I still think
we could accelerate the process and we'd be able to move on as a
community. The reason we've moved so slow has been partially not to
upset people, but instead it's done the opposite.

The other reason this is complicated, though, is that OSM started with
a faulty process of not requiring copyright assignment, which meant
that every contributor had to be handled separately. That's being
fixed now with the new CT.

> I wonder how many people are like me, more
> interested in the mapping and only became aware of this whole licence
> problem, because everyone seems to disagree and the process has taken so
> long, without taking much time to work on the dissenters.

If you honestly feel this way, explain in clear steps what the OSMF
could do to "work with dissenters" that doesn't include stopping the
current process of migrating to a new license.

> Maybe Ive been reading different mailing lists to you, but the opinion
> of 'the contributors' expressed on here, seems to be split between yes
> and no

Whenever there's an actual poll done, there's a large group who say to
change license, a small group who says they don't want to change, and
a huge group who doesn't care.

The group who says to change was, if not 3x bigger, then 2x bigger.
This is a non-issue other than some vocal dissenters who seem larger
in numbers than they are because they're loud and disruptive.

- Serge