[OSM-talk] Join the OSMF !

[Dermot McNally]

On 11 June 2011 01:02, Nic Roets <nroets at gmail.com> wrote:

> I would quite like to take my data and start my own PD / CC0 project.
> So by simply matching my new license to the conditions set by the
> OSMF, I would be voting "yes" in your "referendum".

Of course, you are free to do that. So we need to measure OSMF by
standards different to those which we would expect from a national
government. OSMF can't force you to pay tax and can't divest you of
any data you own. Their only leverage is over how or whether you get
to use resources that they are managing. And as the managers of those
resources they find themselves taking an interest in licence stuff
that most of us don't consider all that often.

> In this "referendum", the OSMF substantially influenced the outcome by
> declaring beforehand "We are changing the license". They refused to
> register new users who do not vote "yes". The emails that was sent out
> only listed the advantages of the license change.

Sounds very sneaky the way you portray it. Sins of omission? They
should probably have linked to arguments both for and against from the
wiki pages outlining the plan. Come to think of it, that's exactly
what they did. Odd that you didn't mention it.

> I am not saying OSMF acted illegally or that the license change is a
> bad thing. I am merely saying that the OSMF decided on the license
> change before there was overwhelming support for it from the
> community.

Was The Community ever going to beat a path to the OSMF demanding a
licence change? I doubt it. Does that mean that we didn't need one? It
does not. Most mappers, and I include myself, are very happy that
Somebody Else(tm) runs the servers, scrounges for the funds, made a
slippy map work and generally gives us what we need so we can just go
out and map.

Should the people hosting the data not be at the core of thinking
about the legal aspects? It's not like the rest of us were queuing up
to have our say.

> The license change was not driven by the community. It was
> driven by a few individuals. How else can you explain the dismally low
> voter turn out when the OSMF members voted on it ?

It was driven by the few individuals who took an interest in the
matter. They were not secretive about their project, indeed
evangelical is the word I would use. For a long time they were met
with a large round of indifference, as reflected in the poll turnout
you mention. Licences, we discover, are just not sexy. "It'll all sort
itself out" is a common reaction to stuff we find too abstract to care
about. It's alright not to care. It's not alright to invent problems
that don't exist.

So anyway, we've come further in the process. It turns out that in
order to find out what people think you have to steal their football
and not give it back until they tell you. Democracy might be fair, but
it turns out it's pretty boring too. Still, we know now that an
overwhelming number of mappers are sufficiently OK with the change.

Some aren't, for various reasons. And that's a shame. But those of you
who aren't need to consider a few things. You need to realise that
you're not the only ones here. You need to realise that there are a
_lot_ of smart people contributing to OSM and most of them are OK with
this. You need to understand that if you try to use "your" data as
leverage you are typically jeapordising the contributions of lots of
your fellow mappers.

You need to remember that this change isn't the final roll of the
dice. You didn't like the way this change was proposed, promoted,
voted upon? Well, the new CTs define in some detail how it has to be
done in the future. That's progress. You would have preferred
PD/Beerware/CC-BY-stand-on-one-leg? Groovy - just find 2/3 of active
mappers who want that too and it can happen without all the
accusations of bad faith we've had this time around.

In summary - if we were in the business of immediate perfection in OSM
nothing would have gone into the map until the whole world was fully
surveyed. We do incremental mapping. Learn to attain your licencing
goals the same way.

Dermot

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