[OSM-talk] Suggestion for an Unconference

[David Murn]

On Fri, 2010-11-26 at 09:23 -0500, Gerald A wrote:

> Just a small point -- legal-talk is an open and publicly available
> list. I don't think
> suggesting and steering the discussion to the topical list is
> "hiding".

If there was a proposal to change the name to OpenMap instead of
OpenStreetMap, which dragged on for many months, and everytime someone
brought up an issue, someone said 'get over it, take it to new-name
email list', would you believe that to be acceptable or 'hiding' an
important discussion?  As others have said, legal details such as
grammatical or legalese issues, should be discussed on legal-talk.  

What would you think if parliament simply made laws and refused to
publish the changed laws, stating that if you really wanted to know
about law changes, youre welcome to sit in the public gallery all day
and keep up-to-date yourself.  Not everyone cares enough to sit through
legal deliberations for 12 hours, to keep track of law changes theyre
required to comply with, in the same way not everyone cares enough to
read through all the legal detail that belongs on the talk list, simply
to stay up-to-date with general information, such as timelines and the
life of their data.

> So, you are not alone. Personally, I think the constant repetition and
> ensuing flamewar does more harm then any license change might

I think such an important issue taking so many years to get anywhere,
and not sticking at all to any timeline, is whats doing more harm than
good.  The problem is, rather than addressing the handful of complaints
(that as you point out are repeated over and over again), the powers
that be are telling them to go away, then wondering why we dont.  People
keep saying the decisions have been made many years ago, so, why has it
taken so long to do anything?

Im sure the time its taken for this licence change, is many times longer
than the whole project took to establish in the first place, and has
probably dragged on for a significant portion of the projects life.
THAT is whats doing harm to the project, not people discussing it.

Open projects like this, generally dont attract the sheep who just put
up with it, they attract people who are aware of their licence rights
and are used to groups trying to screw others to get what they want,
usually using legal avenues to do so.