[OSM-talk] the 70% , was Re: License graph

[Thomas Davie]

On 19 Apr 2011, at 09:41, David Groom wrote:

>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Thomas Davie" <tom.davie at gmail.com>
>> 
>> The thing you're not understanding is that this isn't a vote.  It's an agreement to distribute your work under a new license.
> 
> No, the CT's  are an agreement to contribute work, not to distribute it.

Sorry, I misspoke.

>> That 70% *have* agreed to distribute their work under the new license.  It is entirely valid for the camp that wants to move to the ODbL sooner rather than later to count the 70% in their stats, because accepting the new license is all that matters, not some imaginary war between "yes" and "no".
>> 
> 
> It's not valid to count people who haven't voted in the "YES" statistics. Its valid to say all the people who have never edited would automatically have agreed to the CT's, any more than it is valid to say that all the people who have never edited would not have agreed to the CT's.

But again – it's not a matter of voting yes, it's a matter of agreeing to contribute under a license.  There's no voting going on here, just a bunch of people letting OSM use their changes after the switch, and a bunch not letting them.  No one is "counting the 70% in the yes vote" – instead, they are saying "this 70% have no impact on us changing to the new license because no data will be deleted if we simply dump these users".

> Nor is it valid to simply switch these people over to the  new CT's without incident.  OK, don't let these people edit without agreeing to the new CT's, but to simply switch their accounts to the new CT's on the assumption they would agree, and it doesn't affect ant data currently in the OSM database, is not right.

No one is proposing switching them to the new CTs – what's going to happen is that their data (all none of it) is simply going to be dropped.  The biggest impact this will have on OSM is that 2 or 3 people will come back in a while going "didn't I have an account here 2-3 years ago?  Hmm, can't remember the name, I'll create a new one" and will agree to the new CTs when they sign up again.

Bob