[OSM-talk] License/CT issues: Let's not punish the world's disadvantaged, pls.

[Ed Loach]

Nic wrote:

> Basically all you are saying is that mailing lists are a bad way
to
> measure support. And I agree 100%.
> 
> Can you prove that the average contributor thinks that the
> benefits* of the ODbL exceeds the cost of
> implementing it** ? Then I will personally start telling people
that
> they are in the minority and should go away.
> 
> *: Looking at whitehouse.gov, the software on my phone etc, I
can't
> see a single thing that will change (either positive or negative).
> 
> **: To implement it, we will have to delete some data. We are
> bothering people by sending them email and if they do not respond,
> we use facebook etc.

I doubt there are any average contributors on this list. I won't be
staying much longer since my return the other day because there has
been very little worth reading (perhaps even including this message
I'm sending), and too much that wasn't that I regret wasting my time
reading.

But I had a look at fosm.org yesterday and they (whoever "they" are
- is there a fosmf?) seem to be making the same mistake that osm.org
did with the original CTs; should they ever need to relicense (say
move from cc-by-sa 2.0 to 3.0) the data, then as far as I can tell
they will need to contact all the contributors or themselves risk
data loss. It would perhaps be better to have their CTs now such
that it is clear that only active contributors will be contacted if
such a change is required and what majority will be required for a
change to happen. Perhaps this should be discussed on
talk-legal at fosm.org when they get as far as setting up email lists.
I'm also curious who counts as the contributor for all the stuff
imported from OSM; presumably it counts as a single contributor's
imports.

Anyway, as this process has taken about 5 years so far I am glad it
is reaching the end at last, and a small loss of data which with the
rapid growth in the number of contributors should take little time
to replace. Almost all of us here joined the project after it was
clear that an attribution sharealike licence applied to our
contributions, and now there is such a licence that covers the data,
and CTs that make any future move from say ODBL 1 to ODBL2 less
painful, that can only be a good thing.

Oh, and another added benefit is that once we reach phase 5 I can
probably come back on various OSM related email lists without all
threads degenerating into license debates. 

Ed