[OSM-talk] Suggestion for an Unconference

[john whelan]

Just a comment from one of the 130 who has voted yes on the recommendation
of one of the people I thought was fairly sensible here and I now regret
taking his advice.  I now strongly suspect I should have spent six months
wading through through the legal talk side of things rather than mapping
because a whole slew of issues seem to be coming up here.

I would like the ability to go back and change my vote.

I don't like being told this is not the place for discussion of license
issues or concerns.  In light of the recent involvement of Microsoft and
other large players I think there are perception problems that need to be
addressed.

For example I'm very concerned that there is no plan to deal with the
transition to the new licensing model.

Perhaps OSM should take note of the Open Data mob and be a little more open
about what is happening rather than trying to censure discussion on issues
and concerns which apparently have not been addressed by the decision
makers.  They seem to have taken decisions but won't accept any
responsibility to address issues and concerns.  I'm not asking to stay with
the old licenses necessarily but I would like to see some sort of plan and
if we can find a way to address the issues and concerns.

Cheerio John

On 24 November 2010 22:28, David Murn <davey at incanberra.com.au> wrote:

> On Thu, 2010-11-25 at 00:11 +0100, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>
> > 2. The license train has left the station. We've been at this for ages
> > and there is no viable alternative. We will certainly not throw away
> > years of deliberations just because a handful of US corporations asked
> > us to (and imagine the outcry among mappers if we were to do that).
>
> I think you mean 'The license slow-coach has left the station'..  If
> theres 'no alternative' then what is going to happen at the next stages
> of the license changeover, where apparently the community will be asked
> what to do next?  I wonder if its a case of 'previous submissions need
> not submit again', when it comes to asking the community our views.  By
> the way, from a quick glance at the voting process and timeline, it
> appears the train might have left the station, but no-one was onboard.
>
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Implementation_Plan
> You'll note that re-licensing only started to occur 12 weeks ago and the
> voting process had 130 people vote yes (Ive never seen a way to vote no,
> other than navigating away from the page with a single 'accept' button),
> hardly a case of left-the-station.  I wonder how many people would
> change their vote, knowing the interests that large companies are
> getting in OSM, and how many people would be starting to worry about any
> 'future licence change' clause in CTs, when the projects founder works
> for the company known for taking over and screwing over other groups
> with legal avenues and licences.
>
> Fortunately from the wiki, the comment:
> > Note: Licensing Working Group (LWG) is currently primarily focusing on
> > clarification improvements to the Contributor Terms and resolving
> > license issues with data donors.
>
> leads me to believe that despite what you and others are saying about
> everything being set in stone and not being able to be changed, is
> wrong, and the LWG *ARE* seeking to improve and fix the CTs and licence
> issues.  At least it appears one working group is trying to hold the
> forks together while other individials try and drive the wedge in.
>
> > 3. In case you want to go into any kind of detail about the license,
> > legal-talk ist that way --->.
>
> I have no interest in the legal detail of the licence, only interested
> in talking about the ramifications of the licence on our map data, no
> matter how many times people try to derail this important issue to a
> legal mailing list.
>
> David
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> talk mailing list
> talk at openstreetmap.org
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20101125/8a391fd2/attachment.html>