Hi, > Everyone who has contributed data to the project has, at least, > indicated their willingness to contribute data under a licence which > has these sort of general terms.
True but they had no choice - either work with OSM as it is, or go away and find another project. Now, given the choice, they might express their preferences by saying they'll not make the switch unless [insert stuff they always wanted but never got from the license]. These people suddenly have a bargaining power and they might use it. And this is much more than pure rhetoric; it is a psychological fact - if people have to cope with a situation they don't entirely like, that's one thing, but if there was an opportunity for change and they failed to achieve change, they are much unhappier than they were before the opportunity. > I know of no projects which have changed from share-alike to PD/BSD > or equivalent. (If anyone knows of some, please say so.) However, I > know of several projects which have added or strengthened > share-alike provisions - Wine and Mozilla being only two. I think it doesn't help to invoke comparisons with software projects. There are too many differences. Googling for "from GPL to" yields a number of software projects that dropped copyleft but, not surprisingly, most of them seem to be of a kind where you don't have to ask 400 developers. I have no doubts that the number of projects moving from PD/BSD to a GPL/SA style license is vastly greater than the number of projects moving the other way round, simply because you don't have to ask your contributors in the first case while you have to in the other case. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail [EMAIL PROTECTED] ## N49°00.09' E008°23.33' _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-talk
