[OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

David Murn davey at incanberra.com.au
Sun Apr 17 00:27:32 BST 2011


On Sat, 2011-04-16 at 18:00 +0200, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 04/16/2011 05:40 PM, Graham Jones wrote:
> ... it is not clear whether OS Opendata in the UK, or Nearmap in
> > Austrailia is compatible.   I would have expected these issues to be
> > resolved before forcing people to re-licence.
> 
> Isn't it funny how, just over a year ago, we couldn't care less about 
> anything the Ordnace Survey did, and suddenly we are a project that must 
> choose their license according to what is compatible with OS?

If OS used some obscure licence and someone suggested changing to it,
then youd get people asking the same thing.  The thing is, these
services arent using obscure licences, theyre using a very common one.
Becoming incompatible with CC-BY-SA doesnt just mean that you lose one
source, or two sources, it means that you lose compatibility with
hundreds.

> I say to you the same I said to Ian - even if OSMF would publish what 
> mechanism they plan to use (and I'm pretty sure they don't have one 
> yet), then that mechanism would not become part of the contract and it 
> could be changed at any later time, say, after majorities in the OSMF 
> board have changed after the next election or something.

Silly me.  Silly me for thinking that we here at OSM believed in the
meaning of the O in OSM.  Incase the OSMF board has forgotten, the O
means Open, it doesnt mean you can pick and choose what they choose to
allow the community to see.  Wouldnt this have been a good thing to
start planning, like, when it was first realised that it was needed?
We've been complaining about these issues for years, and people like
yourself have been telling dissenters to shut the hell up.  Now that the
time has come, the 'foundation' is only just realising the issues that
the rest of us raised years ago and are now chasing their tails trying
to setup these mechanisms in the space of a day or two rather than a
year or two.

> I'm sorry but I think you can either trust people to do the right thing 
> or not trust them, but nobody will give you a written statement (or if 
> they do it won't be worth much).

Isnt that a problem with contract law?  OSMF could give you a written
statement, which might be suitably legally compatible in 2 or 3
countries, but not in the rest of the world.  Compare this to the
current situation where the current licence is accepted around the
world, with 2 or 3 exceptions.  Wouldnt it be easier to resovle the
issues in those couple of countries where they exist, than to find a
contract which has to be worded properly (if thats even possible) to
comply with every user's nation's laws.

David





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