[OSM-talk] Terminate Facebook rights under ODbL

[Christoph Hormann]

On Sunday 09 June 2019, Nuno Caldeira wrote:
>
> I hereby request OSMF board, responsabile for the OSMF, as the
> Licensor under ODbL 9.4 c) to notify Facebook and remove their rights
> under ODbL, if the violation is not fixed after 30 days of notice. as
> written on ODbL.
> https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1.0/index.html

I applaud you placing the ball in the OSMF board's court on this matter 
but i would not expect substantial actions from there.

Although Facebook is an extreme example it is by far not the only case 
of big organizational OSM data users and contributors looking down on 
the OSM community and its values and doing as they please disregarding 
objections to what they do if they consider them unworthy or 
insignificant.

And with at the moment at least four out of seven OSMF board members 
having ties to big organizational OSM data users/contributors ... well, 
as we say in German:  Eine Krähe hackt der anderen kein Auge aus.

Of course the OSM community does not depend on the OSMF to clearly 
communicate to Facebook that their insulting behaviour is not 
acceptable and that it will cost them a lot more economically in the 
long term to continue acting this way than anything they might hope to 
gain from it.

But the question is of course if the OSM community as a whole is willing 
to stand up to Facebook and others to defend our values.  If you 
imagine what percentage of OSM community members are Facebook customers 
you might already have your answer.  Or to put it slightly differently:  
Why should Facebook even assume that OSM community members are in 
anyway displeased with Facebook if they (to a large part) continue 
using Facebook?

I mean using Facebook as a communication platform for the OSM community 
is even advertised on osm.org (via iD editor and osm-community-index):

https://github.com/osmlab/osm-community-index/search?q=facebook&unscoped_q=facebook

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/