Peter Miller wrote: > Is there not a large potential conflict of interest between SteveC in relation > to his driving this change within the Foundation and also being a director of > a company that could well benefit from the OSM project not offering a full set > of services? I don't know, but I certainly don't have the information to feel > comfortable with this initiative until we have some more facts available to > us.
I think this is uncalled for. There are any number of technical things you need to think through before switching from a system that pretty much works to something (anything) else. While it's valid to question what those things are, and their significance, I don't think you can jump from that to it all being an evil plot hatched in CM's volcano lair. You argue that anyone with a commercial interest in OSM (e.g., me) who's listed on the {{PD-user}} page (me again) has a potential conflict of interest. You could argue that as a commercial interest who's been pushing very hard for the licence issue to be resolved, perhaps you have some ulterior motive too... Nothing useful comes out of that kind of discussion. The current progress on the licence is certainly frustrating for those of us who are thinking about how our companies can best use and contribute to OSM, but I suspect it's been a very frustrating process on the OSMF side as well. E.g., we have no idea what the background to "all communications with Jordan had broken down" was, or what impact that has had. It would be nice to know what happened, but having a public discussion about that while trying to resolve whatever the issue was probably wouldn't have been helpful. I would definitely recommend you stand for the OSMF next year, as I think you could make a valuable contribution to the process (e.g., I agree with your thinking re the trademark). I don't know if you'll find the grass is any greener though. Although the licence project seems to be moving forward very slowly, it is at least moving (vs what happened previously, where we had endless GPS-vs-BSD debates on the mailing list but no real progress whatsoever). -dair ___________________________________________________ d...@refnum.com http://www.refnum.com/ _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk