Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Ben Last]

Now that the dust has (hopefully) settled a little on this thread...

Whilst it's not actually in my job description to try and move forward on
how  NearMap deals with the proposed OSM licence change, I'm going to try
anyway.  Having trawled back through endless discussions, what I'm after are
responses (preferably by those actively engaged in pushing forward the
relicensing process) to these questions:
1. Is the ODbl fixed now, so that we can unleash expensive lawyers on an
analysis of it?
2. Are the new contributor terms fixed, so we know whether there are to be
any changes to the wording, *specifically the wording that covers future
changes to the licence*.
3. Is there a definition proposed for what constitutes a "free and open"
licence, with regard to the wording in the contributor terms about potential
changes to the licence.

As ever, we are *not* trying to influence the debate; NearMap aims to
support OSM and generation of mapping data.  But we have a whole bunch of
ongoing work (including a load of it that's on my personal to-do list) that
is heavily affected by the relicensing, and I'd like to try and get some
clarity.

Just to clarify; we don't (pending legal review) have any known problem yet
with ODbl, but we do have concerns over the potential for derived works
based on our data to be relicensed under some new, as yet undefined, licence
at some point in the future.

This posting also emailed (slightly changed) to le...@osmfoundation.org.

Cheers
Ben

-- 
Ben Last
Development Manager (HyperWeb)
NearMap Pty Ltd
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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Anthony]

On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 11:49 PM, Anthony  wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 6:18 PM, Ed Avis  wrote:
>
>> So again, either CC-BY-SA 'protects' the data or it does not.
>>
>
> Or it "protects" the data sometimes, in some jurisdictions, possibly,
> depending on who you ask.
>

On second though, put the quotes around "it" too, since the purpose of
CC-BY-SA is more to selectively "unprotect" the work than to "protect" it.
Copyright law is what "protects" the work.
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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Anthony]

On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 6:18 PM, Ed Avis  wrote:

> So again, either CC-BY-SA 'protects' the data or it does not.
>

Or it "protects" the data sometimes, in some jurisdictions, possibly,
depending on who you ask.
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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Heiko Jacobs]

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason schrieb:

Is there any official archive of all contributors agreements yet used
in OSM?


This, I think: 
http://www.osmfoundation.org/index.php?title=License/Contributor_Terms&action=history


I meant ALL of them including this one the very first mapper
no. 1 has signed ... ;-)
... not only the history of the CT proposed ...

Mueck


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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason]

On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 18:32, Heiko Jacobs  wrote:
> John Smith schrieb:
>>
>> On 20 July 2010 19:11, 80n <80n...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> There is no contract between OSMF and most contributors (excepting
>>> newbies
>>> who have signed up to the Contributor Terms)..
>>
>> Erm since OSM-F does run OSM.org the old contributor agreement saying
>> you agree to license your work under cc-by-sa would be a contract,
>> wouldn't it?
>
> Is there any official archive of all contributors agreements yet used
> in OSM?

This, I think: 
http://www.osmfoundation.org/index.php?title=License/Contributor_Terms&action=history

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Heiko Jacobs]

John Smith schrieb:

On 20 July 2010 19:11, 80n <80n...@gmail.com> wrote:

There is no contract between OSMF and most contributors (excepting newbies
who have signed up to the Contributor Terms)..


Erm since OSM-F does run OSM.org the old contributor agreement saying
you agree to license your work under cc-by-sa would be a contract,
wouldn't it?


Is there any official archive of all contributors agreements yet used
in OSM?

Mueck


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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 20 July 2010 19:11, 80n <80n...@gmail.com> wrote:
> There is no contract between OSMF and most contributors (excepting newbies
> who have signed up to the Contributor Terms)..

Erm since OSM-F does run OSM.org the old contributor agreement saying
you agree to license your work under cc-by-sa would be a contract,
wouldn't it?

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[80n]

On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 10:46 PM, Ulf Möller  wrote:

> Am 17.07.2010 05:07, schrieb Michael Barabanov:
>
>  1. Current license does not cover the OSM data (I think that's the OSMF
>> view).  In this  case, OSMF can just change to ODBL without asking anyone.
>>
>
> The OSMF has a contractual relationship with its contributors. So if there
> is no copyright protection on the CC-BY-SA licensed dataset that does not
> mean the OSMF can do anything it wants with the data.
>
> There is no contract between OSMF and most contributors (excepting newbies
who have signed up to the Contributor Terms)..

Not all members of OSMF are contributors.  Not many contributors are members
of OSMF.





> Moral issues aside...
>
>
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Ulf Möller]

Am 17.07.2010 05:07, schrieb Michael Barabanov:


1. Current license does not cover the OSM data (I think that's the OSMF
view).  In this  case, OSMF can just change to ODBL without asking anyone.


The OSMF has a contractual relationship with its contributors. So if 
there is no copyright protection on the CC-BY-SA licensed dataset that 
does not mean the OSMF can do anything it wants with the data.


Moral issues aside...


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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[SteveC]

On Jul 19, 2010, at 3:53 PM, Anthony wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 10:35 PM, Nathan Edgars II  wrote:
> It seems to me that Steve's post is not just a harmless rant, but
> contains an implication, whether purposeful or not, that some mappers,
> namely stay-at-home sons (and daughters?), are less equal than others.
> Perhaps this should not merely be implied, but written out in the
> bylaws.
> 
> I thought it was just a mindless attack, since I'm currently a stay-at-home 
> father, not a stay-at-home son, and I don't even have a basement.  When facts 
> aren't on his side, SteveC likes to make up false shit and start hurling it 
> around.  Par for the course and not very surprising.

Oh bollocks, you just want to be able to throw insults my way and not have me 
respond. If I respond in kind then you act surprised and upset and try to hide 
the fact that you were the one throwing insults in the first place.

Steve

stevecoast.com


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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[80n]

On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 3:41 PM, SteveC  wrote:

> Where is all this bitterness and anger coming from 80n? You took everything
> I said and twisted it 180 degrees.
>

So, really, you agree with me, but I've just twisted it so that it appears
that you disagree with me? ;)

If I've mis-interpreted what you said then please clarify your meaning.



> Gun to your head?
>

This objection was made by Ulf Lamping in December 2009 [1].  The LWG has
failed to address this issue.  The LWG is directed by OSMF and, you, the
chairman of OSMF have just said " I say the LWG should just push ahead with
the plan".  The LWG appears to listen to your comments more closely than
Ulf's.  They have chosen to ignore this issue.

[1] http://www.mail-archive.com/talk@openstreetmap.org/msg24450.html

Quashing discussion?
>

Your attitude is well documented, for example:
http://www.mail-archive.com/talk@openstreetmap.org/msg24483.html

All I said is maybe we could be nicer to people in the LWG.
>

What you said was "But, every time they do something, the mailing lists fill
up ..."  What I thought was maybe there's a reason for that.


>
> There are a hundred ways you could contribute meaningfully to this and yet
> you pick bitter dissent. That's not the 80n I remember, where's it coming
> from?
>

Steve
>
> stevecoast.com
>
> On Jul 19, 2010, at 3:17 PM, 80n <80n...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 6:29 PM, SteveC < 
> st...@asklater.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jul 17, 2010, at 12:06 PM, 80n wrote:
>> > In other words, we were wrong, we chose the wrong license out of
>> ignorance. Shit happens.
>> >
>> > Yeah, shit happens, OSM becomes outrageously successful and nobody
>> abuses the spirit of the license.  What kind of shit is that?
>>
>> People abuse it all the time, cf Nike and many others.
>>
>> I'm not surprised it's low level anyway right now, the amount of abuse
>> will be a function of the completeness of the data. We're not really a
>> routable dataset just yet and most of the planet is missing address data. As
>> we approach these points fast, the amount of abuse will go up with it.
>>
>> And how will ODbL stop that?  Nike hasn't taken any notice of CC-BY-SA and
> presumably wouldn't have taken any notice of ODbL either.  I suppose you
> could argue that what they did would be permitted under ODbL, but that's a
> slightly different argument.  Your point was that the ODbL would somehow
> stop license abuse.
>
>
>
>> Anyway. Let me make two points:
>>
>> My take on the idea of having a vote on whether we'd theoretically move to
>> the ODbL so long as everyone else does... is that it's basically just a vote
>> on whether to have a vote. It's also without any consequences.
>>
>> The consequences part: Because nothing will really happen either way if
>> the majority of this proposed step vote yes or no, that means that the
>> incentives to vote yes or no are vastly different than saying yes or no to
>> the actual license change. That means that people will vote differently and
>> perhaps to the extent that it will be uncorrelated with an actual license
>> change decision. In other words, your reasons for voting yes or no
>> 'theoretically' are very different to voting yes or no in actuality. If
>> anyone here has a degree in economics or psychology they'd be able to wave
>> around all kinds of textbooks showing how hard it is to measure things like
>> this when you have no real incentives - for example asking people if they'd
>> pay for and go to a gym to get fit - we all know people say they'd like to
>> do those things and never do.
>>
>
> Indeed.  That is the whole point of having such a vote.  It allows people
> to express an unbiased view rather than being presented with an ultimatum.
> It's long been a criticism that the license change proposal is a gun to
> head.  The LWG has chosen not to take any notice of that.  No wonder there's
> an outcry at each step in the process.  Please, put the gun away.
>
>
>>
>> Based on the theoretical vote being wildly inaccurate and also not really
>> affecting anything, I say the LWG should just push ahead with the plan.
>
>
> You're the one with the gun.  What you say goes.
>
>
>
>> If everyone catastrophically says 'no' to the ODbL (which I doubt, but
>> hey) then they can go back to the drawing board with a concrete result. If
>> we all agree, then we can just get on with mapping. But going back to the
>> drawing board with a proxy to a vote - a vote on whether to have a vote - is
>> incredibly flimsy and will just pull out everyone on the other side of the
>> argument who'll charge that it was an invalid vote.
>>
>> In sum, having a vote on whether to have a vote just slows us all down for
>> no particular reason.
>>
>> Therefore, just put the voluntary license change thing out there (so
>> people can change if they want to) and continue with the rest of the plan.
>> If it turns out to be awful and we lost lots of people (which I doubt) then
>> you can consider things at that

Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 10:41 AM, SteveC  wrote:

> There are a hundred ways you could contribute meaningfully to this and yet
> you pick bitter dissent.
>

What is it that you suggest?  How can we get this whole license change
question over with?  One way or another, it'd be really great if we could
just make a decision.  Lately I've been holding off on contributing to OSM,
because I have no idea what's going to happen to my data when/if the switch
to ODbL is made (I definitely won't be agreeing the change).

It's been long enough.  Let's switch or not switch.
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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 20 July 2010 00:41, SteveC  wrote:
> Gun to your head?

It certainly feels like it from my point of view...

> All I said is maybe we could be nicer to people in the LWG.

There is definitely communications problems here, not to mention
conflicting agendas at work, you can't please everyone all the time,
but it seems to be a priority to try and please people in future at
the expense of people in the present moment.

> There are a hundred ways you could contribute meaningfully to this and yet
> you pick bitter dissent. That's not the 80n I remember, where's it coming

I don't know about 80n, but since I started looking into how much data
will possibly be not carried over it's become very disheartening that
there will be a lot of hard work simply disappear. As others have
pointed out this whole relicensing thing is holding OSM back, people
don't want to potentially waste more time and effort if in the end it
will no longer be allowed in OSM's main DB.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[SteveC]

Where is all this bitterness and anger coming from 80n? You took everything I 
said and twisted it 180 degrees. Gun to your head? I'm not even on the LWG. 
Quashing discussion? All I said is maybe we could be nicer to people in the LWG.

There are a hundred ways you could contribute meaningfully to this and yet you 
pick bitter dissent. That's not the 80n I remember, where's it coming from?

Steve

stevecoast.com

On Jul 19, 2010, at 3:17 PM, 80n <80n...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 6:29 PM, SteveC  wrote:
> 
> On Jul 17, 2010, at 12:06 PM, 80n wrote:
> > In other words, we were wrong, we chose the wrong license out of ignorance. 
> > Shit happens.
> >
> > Yeah, shit happens, OSM becomes outrageously successful and nobody abuses 
> > the spirit of the license.  What kind of shit is that?
> 
> People abuse it all the time, cf Nike and many others.
> 
> I'm not surprised it's low level anyway right now, the amount of abuse will 
> be a function of the completeness of the data. We're not really a routable 
> dataset just yet and most of the planet is missing address data. As we 
> approach these points fast, the amount of abuse will go up with it.
> 
> And how will ODbL stop that?  Nike hasn't taken any notice of CC-BY-SA and 
> presumably wouldn't have taken any notice of ODbL either.  I suppose you 
> could argue that what they did would be permitted under ODbL, but that's a 
> slightly different argument.  Your point was that the ODbL would somehow stop 
> license abuse.
> 
>  
> Anyway. Let me make two points:
> 
> My take on the idea of having a vote on whether we'd theoretically move to 
> the ODbL so long as everyone else does... is that it's basically just a vote 
> on whether to have a vote. It's also without any consequences.
> 
> The consequences part: Because nothing will really happen either way if the 
> majority of this proposed step vote yes or no, that means that the incentives 
> to vote yes or no are vastly different than saying yes or no to the actual 
> license change. That means that people will vote differently and perhaps to 
> the extent that it will be uncorrelated with an actual license change 
> decision. In other words, your reasons for voting yes or no 'theoretically' 
> are very different to voting yes or no in actuality. If anyone here has a 
> degree in economics or psychology they'd be able to wave around all kinds of 
> textbooks showing how hard it is to measure things like this when you have no 
> real incentives - for example asking people if they'd pay for and go to a gym 
> to get fit - we all know people say they'd like to do those things and never 
> do.
> 
> Indeed.  That is the whole point of having such a vote.  It allows people to 
> express an unbiased view rather than being presented with an ultimatum.  It's 
> long been a criticism that the license change proposal is a gun to head.  The 
> LWG has chosen not to take any notice of that.  No wonder there's an outcry 
> at each step in the process.  Please, put the gun away.
>  
> 
> Based on the theoretical vote being wildly inaccurate and also not really 
> affecting anything, I say the LWG should just push ahead with the plan.
>  
> You're the one with the gun.  What you say goes.
> 
>  
> If everyone catastrophically says 'no' to the ODbL (which I doubt, but hey) 
> then they can go back to the drawing board with a concrete result. If we all 
> agree, then we can just get on with mapping. But going back to the drawing 
> board with a proxy to a vote - a vote on whether to have a vote - is 
> incredibly flimsy and will just pull out everyone on the other side of the 
> argument who'll charge that it was an invalid vote.
> 
> In sum, having a vote on whether to have a vote just slows us all down for no 
> particular reason.
> 
> Therefore, just put the voluntary license change thing out there (so people 
> can change if they want to) and continue with the rest of the plan. If it 
> turns out to be awful and we lost lots of people (which I doubt) then you can 
> consider things at that stage.
> 
> Oh and by the way, as a thought experiment - if 50% of people drop out due to 
> the license change then you only have to wait a few months for the data to be 
> put back in by other new people - go and look at the user growth and data 
> growth graphs. It's really not as bad as it looks, even under a bad scenario 
> like 50%.
> 
> 
> 
> My second point - have a think on what affect you're all having on the people 
> in the LWG. They've now been working on this for _years_ meeting every week. 
> That's a huge amount of effort and investment. These are good people doing 
> their best to find a way forward. But, every time they do something, the 
> mailing lists fill up ...
>  
> This is clearly a symptom of the problem.  Perhaps they aren't doing the 
> right thing or not doing it in the right way.  Are we supposed to go along 
> with what they say just because they've been working very hard on it.  They 

Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Ian Dees]

On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 8:53 AM, Anthony  wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 10:35 PM, Nathan Edgars II wrote:
>
>> It seems to me that Steve's post is not just a harmless rant, but
>> contains an implication, whether purposeful or not, that some mappers,
>> namely stay-at-home sons (and daughters?), are less equal than others.
>> Perhaps this should not merely be implied, but written out in the
>> bylaws.
>>
>
> I thought it was just a mindless attack, since I'm currently a stay-at-home
> father, not a stay-at-home son, and I don't even have a basement.
>
>
When I lived with my parents I stayed in the basement. Coincidentally when I
started OSM'ing I moved out of my parents house and live with my wife now.
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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Anthony]

On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 10:35 PM, Nathan Edgars II wrote:

> It seems to me that Steve's post is not just a harmless rant, but
> contains an implication, whether purposeful or not, that some mappers,
> namely stay-at-home sons (and daughters?), are less equal than others.
> Perhaps this should not merely be implied, but written out in the
> bylaws.
>

I thought it was just a mindless attack, since I'm currently a stay-at-home
father, not a stay-at-home son, and I don't even have a basement.  When
facts aren't on his side, SteveC likes to make up false shit and start
hurling it around.  Par for the course and not very surprising.
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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[80n]

On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 6:29 PM, SteveC  wrote:

>
> On Jul 17, 2010, at 12:06 PM, 80n wrote:
> > In other words, we were wrong, we chose the wrong license out of
> ignorance. Shit happens.
> >
> > Yeah, shit happens, OSM becomes outrageously successful and nobody abuses
> the spirit of the license.  What kind of shit is that?
>
> People abuse it all the time, cf Nike and many others.
>
> I'm not surprised it's low level anyway right now, the amount of abuse will
> be a function of the completeness of the data. We're not really a routable
> dataset just yet and most of the planet is missing address data. As we
> approach these points fast, the amount of abuse will go up with it.
>
> And how will ODbL stop that?  Nike hasn't taken any notice of CC-BY-SA and
presumably wouldn't have taken any notice of ODbL either.  I suppose you
could argue that what they did would be permitted under ODbL, but that's a
slightly different argument.  Your point was that the ODbL would somehow
stop license abuse.



> Anyway. Let me make two points:
>
> My take on the idea of having a vote on whether we'd theoretically move to
> the ODbL so long as everyone else does... is that it's basically just a vote
> on whether to have a vote. It's also without any consequences.
>
> The consequences part: Because nothing will really happen either way if the
> majority of this proposed step vote yes or no, that means that the
> incentives to vote yes or no are vastly different than saying yes or no to
> the actual license change. That means that people will vote differently and
> perhaps to the extent that it will be uncorrelated with an actual license
> change decision. In other words, your reasons for voting yes or no
> 'theoretically' are very different to voting yes or no in actuality. If
> anyone here has a degree in economics or psychology they'd be able to wave
> around all kinds of textbooks showing how hard it is to measure things like
> this when you have no real incentives - for example asking people if they'd
> pay for and go to a gym to get fit - we all know people say they'd like to
> do those things and never do.
>

Indeed.  That is the whole point of having such a vote.  It allows people to
express an unbiased view rather than being presented with an ultimatum.
It's long been a criticism that the license change proposal is a gun to
head.  The LWG has chosen not to take any notice of that.  No wonder there's
an outcry at each step in the process.  Please, put the gun away.


>
> Based on the theoretical vote being wildly inaccurate and also not really
> affecting anything, I say the LWG should just push ahead with the plan.


You're the one with the gun.  What you say goes.



> If everyone catastrophically says 'no' to the ODbL (which I doubt, but hey)
> then they can go back to the drawing board with a concrete result. If we all
> agree, then we can just get on with mapping. But going back to the drawing
> board with a proxy to a vote - a vote on whether to have a vote - is
> incredibly flimsy and will just pull out everyone on the other side of the
> argument who'll charge that it was an invalid vote.
>
> In sum, having a vote on whether to have a vote just slows us all down for
> no particular reason.
>
> Therefore, just put the voluntary license change thing out there (so people
> can change if they want to) and continue with the rest of the plan. If it
> turns out to be awful and we lost lots of people (which I doubt) then you
> can consider things at that stage.
>
> Oh and by the way, as a thought experiment - if 50% of people drop out due
> to the license change then you only have to wait a few months for the data
> to be put back in by other new people - go and look at the user growth and
> data growth graphs. It's really not as bad as it looks, even under a bad
> scenario like 50%.
>
>
>
> My second point - have a think on what affect you're all having on the
> people in the LWG. They've now been working on this for _years_ meeting
> every week. That's a huge amount of effort and investment. These are good
> people doing their best to find a way forward. But, every time they do
> something, the mailing lists fill up ...


This is clearly a symptom of the problem.  Perhaps they aren't doing the
right thing or not doing it in the right way.  Are we supposed to go along
with what they say just because they've been working very hard on it.  They
should at least be trying to work on the right thing.


> with new things they should do which leads to a steady state - they
> complete one task and then are given a new one to do without actually
> approaching the goal. They have to balance this with a fair number of people
> complaining that it's taking them forever to get anywhere. That's not a fun
> situation to be in. For years.
>

> Very few of us here with all these opinions and time on the mailing list -
> whether they are good, bad or ugly opinions - have the time, whatever our
> position for or against the license e

Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Elizabeth Dodd]

On Mon, 19 Jul 2010, you wrote:
> No... it slithered out from the 7th Circle of Hell, spawned by the Evil LWG
> and her commander Mike of Norse.
> 
> The Brethren Thirteen (the Evil Number) hath rendered blah blah blah...
> 
> Seriously - where do you guys get off with these dark mutterings? The CT's
> didn't 'creep out quietly', you just weren't paying attention.
> 
> You don't have to cast these vague aspersions on the LWG to make your
> point.
> 
> Steve

I don't find this sort of reply advances the arguments at all.


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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[TimSC]

On 19/07/10 03:07, Nathan Edgars II wrote:

SteveC-2 wrote:
   

And I'll try to imagine your parents basement where you toil endlessly on
such counts.
 

If this is how the OSMF board conducts themselves, perhaps it's best to give
them as little power as possible over the data and its license.
   
Name calling is the least of our problems at this stage! I don't think 
Steve was speaking in an official OSMF capacity on this one.


But I do think we need to balance the power of OSMF and the 
contributors. It reminds me of Greek vs. modern political philosophy - 
the former considered "who should rule?", the later considers "how do we 
tame the rulers?".


TimSC


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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Ben Last]

On 19 July 2010 13:48, Michael Barabanov wrote:

> Would specifying that the new license must be not just open/free but
> specifically an SA-like license in contributor agreement solve this
> particular issue?  ODBL looks like SA in spirit.  Further changing of
> licenses could be a separate discussion, when/if there's a new need


I believe that as long as the licence must be share-alike (for a given
definition of "share-alike"), that should work, yes.  Seems to me also that
would address the concerns of a number of other contributors to the
discussion, but I don't pretend to have followed in the exhaustive detail to
know if the LWP had a good reason not to write it that way from the start :)

Cheers
b

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NearMap Pty Ltd
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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Michael Barabanov]

Would specifying that the new license must be not just open/free but
specifically an SA-like license in contributor agreement solve this
particular issue?  ODBL looks like SA in spirit.  Further changing of
licenses could be a separate discussion, when/if there's a new need.

Michael.

On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 9:05 PM, Ben Last  wrote:

> On 19 July 2010 10:18, John Smith  wrote:
>
>> On 19 July 2010 09:04, Richard Weait  wrote:
>> > I don't recall seeing the nice folks from NearMap posting on this
>> > thread.  I do recall an assertion from another poster that NearMap is
>> > firm on the map data being Share-Alike, as is will be under ODbL.  But
>> > no quotations attributed to NearMap, nor posts from them here.  I
>> > think it does a disservice to NearMap to presume that anybody other
>> > than their staff speak for them.
>> I'll emailed them privately and asked them just like anyone else can,
>> I didn't ask to republish their email but even if you don't believe me
>> their current terms spell out their current position, that is a share
>> alike license like CC-by-SA
>
>
> As John has, quite correctly, been polite enough not to share Stuart
> Nixon's email reply with the list, here it is below (release approved by
> Stuart):
>
> "NearMap is keen to continue to support OSM with our PhotoMaps (noting
> that in the future we will be expanding to Europe and other areas).
>
> As our PhotoMaps are central to our business, we can only offer them
> under a CC-BY-SA (or similar) license, and the license must preserve
> this (e.g. not take away these rights at a later date).  It is
> critical to us that the license is Share Alike, so it must be CC-BY-SA
> style, not CC-BY style."
>
> In a separate email (to Liz Dodd, cc John), Stuart added:
>
> "We are watching what is going on with some concern. I'm not sure what
> we will do if OSM splinters; as you may know there are already other
> groups working on street maps, and we don't support them as we would
> rather work with a single open community.
>
> Perhaps you could contact Yahoo to see what their view is on where OSM
> is going; I would guess they would have similar requirements to
> ourselves. If OSM became aware of the issues a non-CC-BY-SA style
> license, or one that can change in the future, causes for commercial
> groups trying to support OSM, then perhaps they can tune the process
> to continue to encourage commercial support.
>
> It is worth noting that in the longer term NearMap plans to cover much
> more of the world's population, and we do hope we can continue to work
> with OSM."
>
> It's probably also worth quoting from our Copyright and Credits page (
> http://www.nearmap.com/legal/copyright), which sets out our point of view:
>
> "Copyrights and credits
>
> We hope you enjoy using our website and our PhotoMaps. We’ve worked very
> hard to bring them to you.
>
> Use of the NearMap website and PhotoMaps is governed by our licence 
> terms
>  and community guidelines . You may
> also refer to our Terms of Use  for other
> related information. From this publication date, our website and all the
> images and PhotoMaps are copyrighted works that belong to NearMap Pty Ltd.
>
> [image: CC-BY-SA] We
> specifically encourage creation of Creative Commons Attribution Share
> Alike (CC-BY-SA)  licensed
> information derived from our PhotoMap content, so that everyone can share
> and build a greater understanding of our planet.
> Credit where it is due!
>
> In creating this website, we are very grateful for the additional
> information from the following sources, which is provided subject to their
> respective copyrights and licences.
> OpenStreetMap
>
> We support the sharing of information and knowledge.
>
> “OpenStreetMap  is an editable map of the
> whole world. It is made by people like you. 
> OpenStreetMap allows
> you to view, edit and use geographical data in a collaborative way from
> anywhere on Earth.
>
> OpenStreetMap creates and provides free geographic data such as street maps
> to anyone who wants them. The project was started because most maps you
> think of as free actually have legal or technical restrictions on their use,
> holding back people from using them in creative, productive, or unexpected
> ways.”
>
> — Source: http://www.openstreetmap.org
>
> Visit OpenStreetMap  to take part in the
> collaboration or read more about OSM, their disclaimers and applicable
> terms of use. "
> You can also take it as read that many of us here at NearMap are
> enthusiastic mappers and OSM contributors.  We're also working hard on ways
> to allow more people to more easily contribute data to OSM.
>
> Cheers
> Ben
>
> --
> Ben Last
> Developme

Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Ben Last]

On 19 July 2010 10:18, John Smith  wrote:

> On 19 July 2010 09:04, Richard Weait  wrote:
> > I don't recall seeing the nice folks from NearMap posting on this
> > thread.  I do recall an assertion from another poster that NearMap is
> > firm on the map data being Share-Alike, as is will be under ODbL.  But
> > no quotations attributed to NearMap, nor posts from them here.  I
> > think it does a disservice to NearMap to presume that anybody other
> > than their staff speak for them.
> I'll emailed them privately and asked them just like anyone else can,
> I didn't ask to republish their email but even if you don't believe me
> their current terms spell out their current position, that is a share
> alike license like CC-by-SA


As John has, quite correctly, been polite enough not to share Stuart Nixon's
email reply with the list, here it is below (release approved by Stuart):

"NearMap is keen to continue to support OSM with our PhotoMaps (noting
that in the future we will be expanding to Europe and other areas).

As our PhotoMaps are central to our business, we can only offer them
under a CC-BY-SA (or similar) license, and the license must preserve
this (e.g. not take away these rights at a later date).  It is
critical to us that the license is Share Alike, so it must be CC-BY-SA
style, not CC-BY style."

In a separate email (to Liz Dodd, cc John), Stuart added:

"We are watching what is going on with some concern. I'm not sure what
we will do if OSM splinters; as you may know there are already other
groups working on street maps, and we don't support them as we would
rather work with a single open community.

Perhaps you could contact Yahoo to see what their view is on where OSM
is going; I would guess they would have similar requirements to
ourselves. If OSM became aware of the issues a non-CC-BY-SA style
license, or one that can change in the future, causes for commercial
groups trying to support OSM, then perhaps they can tune the process
to continue to encourage commercial support.

It is worth noting that in the longer term NearMap plans to cover much
more of the world's population, and we do hope we can continue to work
with OSM."

It's probably also worth quoting from our Copyright and Credits page (
http://www.nearmap.com/legal/copyright), which sets out our point of view:

"Copyrights and credits

We hope you enjoy using our website and our PhotoMaps. We’ve worked very
hard to bring them to you.

Use of the NearMap website and PhotoMaps is governed by our licence
terms
 and community guidelines . You may also
refer to our Terms of Use  for other related
information. From this publication date, our website and all the images and
PhotoMaps are copyrighted works that belong to NearMap Pty Ltd.

[image: CC-BY-SA] We
specifically encourage creation of Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike
(CC-BY-SA)  licensed
information derived from our PhotoMap content, so that everyone can share
and build a greater understanding of our planet.
Credit where it is due!

In creating this website, we are very grateful for the additional
information from the following sources, which is provided subject to their
respective copyrights and licences.
OpenStreetMap

We support the sharing of information and knowledge.

“OpenStreetMap  is an editable map of the
whole world. It is made by people like you.
OpenStreetMap allows
you to view, edit and use geographical data in a collaborative way from
anywhere on Earth.

OpenStreetMap creates and provides free geographic data such as street maps
to anyone who wants them. The project was started because most maps you
think of as free actually have legal or technical restrictions on their use,
holding back people from using them in creative, productive, or unexpected
ways.”

— Source: http://www.openstreetmap.org

Visit OpenStreetMap  to take part in the
collaboration or read more about OSM, their disclaimers and applicable terms
of use. "
You can also take it as read that many of us here at NearMap are
enthusiastic mappers and OSM contributors.  We're also working hard on ways
to allow more people to more easily contribute data to OSM.

Cheers
Ben

-- 
Ben Last
Development Manager (HyperWeb)
NearMap Pty Ltd
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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 19 July 2010 12:35, Nathan Edgars II  wrote:
> It seems to me that Steve's post is not just a harmless rant, but
> contains an implication, whether purposeful or not, that some mappers,
> namely stay-at-home sons (and daughters?), are less equal than others.
> Perhaps this should not merely be implied, but written out in the
> bylaws.

I think it's a bit late to be talking about bylaws, OSM-F already
exists, and there is likely to be too many self serving factions to
push through such a fundamental change as this. Just look at how hard
it is to go from one share alike license to another.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Nathan Edgars II]

On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 10:22 PM, John Smith  wrote:
> On 19 July 2010 12:07, Nathan Edgars II  wrote:
>> If this is how the OSMF board conducts themselves, perhaps it's best to give
>> them as little power as possible over the data and its license.
>
> Just ignore the rants, some people are just venting frustration.

I know how to vent frustration :)

It seems to me that Steve's post is not just a harmless rant, but
contains an implication, whether purposeful or not, that some mappers,
namely stay-at-home sons (and daughters?), are less equal than others.
Perhaps this should not merely be implied, but written out in the
bylaws.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 19 July 2010 12:07, Nathan Edgars II  wrote:
> If this is how the OSMF board conducts themselves, perhaps it's best to give
> them as little power as possible over the data and its license.

Just ignore the rants, some people are just venting frustration.

Although it'll be interesting to know who the 3 new board members are
and what their take on all this is.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 19 July 2010 09:04, Richard Weait  wrote:
> I don't recall seeing the nice folks from NearMap posting on this
> thread.  I do recall an assertion from another poster that NearMap is
> firm on the map data being Share-Alike, as is will be under ODbL.  But
> no quotations attributed to NearMap, nor posts from them here.  I
> think it does a disservice to NearMap to presume that anybody other
> than their staff speak for them.

I'll emailed them privately and asked them just like anyone else can,
I didn't ask to republish their email but even if you don't believe me
their current terms spell out their current position, that is a share
alike license like CC-by-SA:

http://www.nearmap.com/products/free-commercial-licence

"If you derive information from observing our PhotoMaps, and include
that information in a work, you will own that work, and may distribute
it to others under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike
(CC-BY-SA) licence."

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 19 July 2010 07:59, SteveC  wrote:
> Okay - you're saying that nearmap's concern is attribution?

Surprisingly no, they don't require attribution, which is weird in and
of itself, but do require any derived map data to be made available
under a share alike license, so that they can make use of it. They
give us free use of their imagery in return they get to use the data,
which seems fair and equitable to me.

> Here's another scenario - You could say to nearmap that when we switch over 
> to odbl they switch off the aerial imagery but allow us to keep using the 
> data so far under the odbl. When things have settled down in X number of 
> months and they see we're not going to jump license again any time soon then 
> they can start letting us use the imagery again?

We all have our own agendas and biases, but you can't say 2 or 3 years
or even 6 months from now that the derived data won't suddenly be
pushed under a different, non-share alike license. At that point there
is no sections that cover incompatible license data, in fact just the
opposite, the data continues under a different license if enough
active contributors agree, which is why even cc-by data won't be
compatible.

Even with the most honourable intentions none of us can know what the
future will bring, but I can only point and push for things in my
interests, which at this stage section 3 of the new CTs ain't it.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Nathan Edgars II]

SteveC-2 wrote:
> 
> And I'll try to imagine your parents basement where you toil endlessly on
> such counts.
> 
> Steve
> 
> stevecoast.com
> 

If this is how the OSMF board conducts themselves, perhaps it's best to give
them as little power as possible over the data and its license.
-- 
View this message in context: 
http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/What-could-we-do-to-make-this-licences-discussion-more-inclusive-tp5292284p5310435.html
Sent from the General Discussion mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[andrzej zaborowski]

On 19 July 2010 01:04, Richard Weait  wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 6:06 PM, andrzej zaborowski  wrote:
> [ snip ]
>> Maybe when you say ODbL you mean ODbL + CT, but I'll just point out
>> that John didn't seem to oppose ODbL, perhaps the opposite, just
>> opposing to the text of the CT.  The CT is also what nearmap is not
>> accepting and what I would have trouble accepting.
>
> I don't recall seeing the nice folks from NearMap posting on this
> thread.  I do recall an assertion from another poster that NearMap is
> firm on the map data being Share-Alike, as is will be under ODbL.  But
> no quotations attributed to NearMap, nor posts from them here.  I
> think it does a disservice to NearMap to presume that anybody other
> than their staff speak for them.

I meant it just in the same way somebody presented the position of
Yahoo in this thread, and elsewhere we're saying "don't trace from
Google maps as their terms don't allow that" even though possibly
nobody from Google has said it in the given thread.

Cheers

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Richard Weait]

On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 6:06 PM, andrzej zaborowski  wrote:
[ snip ]
> Maybe when you say ODbL you mean ODbL + CT, but I'll just point out
> that John didn't seem to oppose ODbL, perhaps the opposite, just
> opposing to the text of the CT.  The CT is also what nearmap is not
> accepting and what I would have trouble accepting.

I don't recall seeing the nice folks from NearMap posting on this
thread.  I do recall an assertion from another poster that NearMap is
firm on the map data being Share-Alike, as is will be under ODbL.  But
no quotations attributed to NearMap, nor posts from them here.  I
think it does a disservice to NearMap to presume that anybody other
than their staff speak for them.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[SteveC]

On Jul 19, 2010, at 12:08 AM, Anthony wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 5:56 PM, SteveC  wrote:
> 
> On Jul 18, 2010, at 9:49 PM, Anthony wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 2:11 PM, SteveC  wrote:
> > The companies I talk to today come down in to two camps on PD. The first 
> > basically lick their lips and want us to go PD so they don't have to 
> > contribute anything (in effect make their business easier) and the second 
> > think it would be nuts because then the project wouldn't have long term 
> > growth potential and would probably die and fragment like BSD did etc etc 
> > etc.
> >
> > I'd count the second group as the brighter ones.
> >
> > That's interesting, because last time you commented on it, you said "it 
> > would be much better to move OSM to PD or CC0 for CloudMade and all the 
> > other companies".  Glad to see you're being more honest about it.
> 
> Hi
> 
> Of course it would be better - then CM and everyone else could do what they 
> like without having to deal with emails like this one. There's nothing new or 
> complicated here - it's very simple. The best thing for CloudMade would be to 
> have complete and free access to the data. The best thing for OSM and the 
> community as a whole, including commercial vendors like CM, is to have 
> share-alike provisions which keep everyone contributing and honest.
> 
> Just basic game theory.
> 
> I guess I'll count you as one of the "less bright" ones. 

And I'll try to imagine your parents basement where you toil endlessly on such 
counts.

Steve

stevecoast.com


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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[SteveC]

On Jul 18, 2010, at 11:23 PM, Liz wrote:

> On Sun, 18 Jul 2010, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>> Did imports and Nearmap tracing in Australia start before the 
>> relicensing effort, or were you simply not aware of it, or did you not 
>> take it seriously?
> We started imports a while ago, with the first I recall in 2007.
> In 2007 I was not aware of an attempt to relicense OSM, but it was probably 
> started by then. What I read on signup was CC-by-SA, and no talk of any 
> future 
> change.
> 
> Then ODBL was presented, with a fanfare, and later the "Contributor Terms" 
> crept out, more quietly.

No... it slithered out from the 7th Circle of Hell, spawned by the Evil LWG and 
her commander Mike of Norse.

The Brethren Thirteen (the Evil Number) hath rendered blah blah blah...

Seriously - where do you guys get off with these dark mutterings? The CT's 
didn't 'creep out quietly', you just weren't paying attention.

You don't have to cast these vague aspersions on the LWG to make your point.

Steve

stevecoast.com


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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Anthony]

On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 5:56 PM, SteveC  wrote:

>
> On Jul 18, 2010, at 9:49 PM, Anthony wrote:
>
> > On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 2:11 PM, SteveC  wrote:
> > The companies I talk to today come down in to two camps on PD. The first
> basically lick their lips and want us to go PD so they don't have to
> contribute anything (in effect make their business easier) and the second
> think it would be nuts because then the project wouldn't have long term
> growth potential and would probably die and fragment like BSD did etc etc
> etc.
> >
> > I'd count the second group as the brighter ones.
> >
> > That's interesting, because last time you commented on it, you said "it
> would be much better to move OSM to PD or CC0 for CloudMade and all the
> other companies".  Glad to see you're being more honest about it.
>
> Hi
>
> Of course it would be better - then CM and everyone else could do what they
> like without having to deal with emails like this one. There's nothing new
> or complicated here - it's very simple. The best thing for CloudMade would
> be to have complete and free access to the data. The best thing for OSM and
> the community as a whole, including commercial vendors like CM, is to have
> share-alike provisions which keep everyone contributing and honest.
>
> Just basic game theory.
>

I guess I'll count you as one of the "less bright" ones.
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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[andrzej zaborowski]

Hi,

On 18 July 2010 19:54, SteveC  wrote:
> And anyway, you're comparing it to an absolute situation of status quo - that 
> we all just hum along on CCBYSA because nearmap won't work with us. We can't 
> do that. We all (well nearly all) know that CCBYSA just doesn't work, so 
> you're saying no to the ODbL, no to PD too (because nearmap wont like that 
> either as its not SA)... You can't go through life being a big bag of 'no' 
> like this because nothing will ever happen. The LWG is trying to make a bunch 
> of reasonable decisions that will inevitably disenfranchise some people. They 
> are trying to minimise the number of people disenfranchised and the amount of 
> it, and if you just say 'no' to everything you just look like an unreasonable 
> extremist and risk nobody spending time on your otherwise reasonable points.

Maybe when you say ODbL you mean ODbL + CT, but I'll just point out
that John didn't seem to oppose ODbL, perhaps the opposite, just
opposing to the text of the CT.  The CT is also what nearmap is not
accepting and what I would have trouble accepting.

If the LWG is trying to minimise the number of people unhappy with the
changeover process, they're doing a bad job (see poll below).  The
have not asked (that I know) the community on the mailing list whether
the CT should make the OSMF the licensing body and make the authors
grant these rights to the OSMF.  To any arguments that rose so far
about this point, I've only seen the members of LWG explain for
umpteenth time why they think it's important for OSMF to have these
rights.  Some people agree that it would be good for OSMF to be able
to change the license in the future, some people don't.  But nearly
nobody thinks that this is so important as to sacrifice for example
the ability to import ODbL licensed databases, and basically remove
the SA of our license as John points out.  Here's an old poll (not
very widely publicised) that shows this and which I've never seen the
LWG respond to: http://doodle.com/5ey98xzwcz69ytq7

Cheers

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[SteveC]

On Jul 18, 2010, at 8:18 PM, John Smith wrote:

> On 19 July 2010 04:11, SteveC  wrote:
>> The companies I talk to today come down in to two camps on PD. The first 
>> basically lick their lips and want us to go PD so they don't have to 
>> contribute anything (in effect make their business easier) and the second 
>> think it would be nuts because then the project wouldn't have long term 
>> growth potential and would probably die and fragment like BSD did etc etc 
>> etc.
> 
> I'm not talking about end users of the data, but companies suppling
> either aerial imagery or other data, like AND for example, how would
> they feel if all attribution was stripped from their contributions to
> OSM?

Okay - you're saying that nearmap's concern is attribution?

Here's another scenario - You could say to nearmap that when we switch over to 
odbl they switch off the aerial imagery but allow us to keep using the data so 
far under the odbl. When things have settled down in X number of months and 
they see we're not going to jump license again any time soon then they can 
start letting us use the imagery again?

Steve

stevecoast.com


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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[SteveC]

On Jul 18, 2010, at 9:49 PM, Anthony wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 2:11 PM, SteveC  wrote:
> The companies I talk to today come down in to two camps on PD. The first 
> basically lick their lips and want us to go PD so they don't have to 
> contribute anything (in effect make their business easier) and the second 
> think it would be nuts because then the project wouldn't have long term 
> growth potential and would probably die and fragment like BSD did etc etc etc.
> 
> I'd count the second group as the brighter ones.
> 
> That's interesting, because last time you commented on it, you said "it would 
> be much better to move OSM to PD or CC0 for CloudMade and all the other 
> companies".  Glad to see you're being more honest about it.

Hi

Of course it would be better - then CM and everyone else could do what they 
like without having to deal with emails like this one. There's nothing new or 
complicated here - it's very simple. The best thing for CloudMade would be to 
have complete and free access to the data. The best thing for OSM and the 
community as a whole, including commercial vendors like CM, is to have 
share-alike provisions which keep everyone contributing and honest.

Just basic game theory.

Steve

stevecoast.com


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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Liz]

On Sun, 18 Jul 2010, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> Did imports and Nearmap tracing in Australia start before the 
> relicensing effort, or were you simply not aware of it, or did you not 
> take it seriously?
We started imports a while ago, with the first I recall in 2007.
In 2007 I was not aware of an attempt to relicense OSM, but it was probably 
started by then. What I read on signup was CC-by-SA, and no talk of any future 
change.

Then ODBL was presented, with a fanfare, and later the "Contributor Terms" 
crept out, more quietly.

At the stage of announcement of ODBL we were already using CC-by-SA data from 
the Australian government. At a later date this data was changed to CC-by, and 
we would be able to retain it under ODBL, but not with the Contributor Terms 
which had by then been published.

Nearmap chose to make their orthophotos available to OSM under the current 
licence, CC-by-SA. The email to a few of us yesterday indicated firmly that 
Share-Alike was very important to NearMap, and that there is no possibility of 
the share alike being removed at a later stage.
So ODBL & contributor terms which preserve share-alike would possibly be 
acceptable.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 19 July 2010 06:44, Peteris Krisjanis  wrote:
> So, problem is, while ODBL is fine as SA license (for data that is),
> CT requires to give OSMF rights to republish data under license which
> so far by CT can be also non-share-alike, right?

The CT is also likely to conflict with cc-by data...

> Will it be a problem to add small addition to this section 3 "or
> another share alike free and open license"? Or it will destroy
> someone's dream about publishing those data under BSD like or PD some
> day? :)

If people were being honest they wouldn't try to sneak things in like this...

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Peteris Krisjanis]

2010/7/18 John Smith :
> On 19 July 2010 06:27, Peteris Krisjanis  wrote:
>> I know you like to have personal flame war, but in nutshell ODBL is
>> share alike, so no problems here. I have two questions though:
>> 1) Why we need CT in first place
>> 2) What section 3 is about
>
> http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/Contributor_Terms
>
> 3. OSMF agrees to use or sub-license Your Contents as part of a
> database and only under the terms of one of the following licenses:
> ODbL 1.0 for the database and DbCL 1.0 for the individual contents of
> the database; CC-BY-SA 2.0; or another free and open license. Which
> other free and open license is chosen by a vote of the OSMF membership
> and approved by at least a 2/3 majority vote of active contributors.
>
> An "active contributor" is defined as:
>
>    a natural person (whether using a single or multiple accounts) who
> has edited the Project in any 3 calendar months from the last 12
> months (i.e. there is a demonstrated interest over time); and
>    has maintained a valid email address in their registration profile
> and responds within 3 weeks.
>

So, problem is, while ODBL is fine as SA license (for data that is),
CT requires to give OSMF rights to republish data under license which
so far by CT can be also non-share-alike, right?

Will it be a problem to add small addition to this section 3 "or
another share alike free and open license"? Or it will destroy
someone's dream about publishing those data under BSD like or PD some
day? :)

Cheers,
Peter.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 19 July 2010 06:27, Peteris Krisjanis  wrote:
> I know you like to have personal flame war, but in nutshell ODBL is
> share alike, so no problems here. I have two questions though:
> 1) Why we need CT in first place
> 2) What section 3 is about

http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/Contributor_Terms

3. OSMF agrees to use or sub-license Your Contents as part of a
database and only under the terms of one of the following licenses:
ODbL 1.0 for the database and DbCL 1.0 for the individual contents of
the database; CC-BY-SA 2.0; or another free and open license. Which
other free and open license is chosen by a vote of the OSMF membership
and approved by at least a 2/3 majority vote of active contributors.

An "active contributor" is defined as:

a natural person (whether using a single or multiple accounts) who
has edited the Project in any 3 calendar months from the last 12
months (i.e. there is a demonstrated interest over time); and
has maintained a valid email address in their registration profile
and responds within 3 weeks.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Anthony]

On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 4:22 PM, John Smith wrote:

> On 19 July 2010 06:18, TimSC  wrote:
> > It's not a question of OSMF member support, I am talking about how
> > share-alike encourages business to share data with OSM.
>
> Then why mention produced work, since ODBL and cc-by-sa both encourage
> sharing the underlying data?


ODbL doesn't even cover the underlying data.  And so far no one has answered
the question as to how produced works aren't a huge loophole.  If someone
creates a produced work with the data and licenses the produced work under
CC-BY, what stops someone else from taking that produced work, extracting
the data, and now having the data under CC-BY?
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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[TimSC]

On 18/07/10 21:22, John Smith wrote:

On 19 July 2010 06:18, TimSC  wrote:
   

On 18/07/10 19:39, John Smith wrote:
 

On 19 July 2010 04:30, TimSC   wrote:

   

Also, if we really cared about share-alike, we would have it apply to
"produced works" - that would encourage companies to give back.

 
   

Then why mention produced work, since ODBL and cc-by-sa both encourage
sharing the underlying data?
   
Share-alike of the underlying data is a separate issue from share-alike 
produced works (obviously). I am aware that ODbL doesn't do produced 
work share-alike because certain parties want to layer proprietary data 
with OSM data. I am saying that share-alike produced works would also 
encourage the sharing of data. Any data that is encorprated into a 
share-alike produced work can then be rolled back into OSM, not to 
mention making the rendering and colours available for reuse. This is 
the intention of the current license (although how effective it is is a 
separate controversy). What I fail to see is if share-alike is good one 
one case, why not in the other?


TimSC


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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Peteris Krisjanis]

>> I never said they didn't agree to the ODBL, but that the new CTs,
>> specifically section 3, wasn't going to be compatible, even if ODBL
>> is.
>
> Only if a later license change were to go non-SA.  An hypothetical
> situation that you have created.
>

I know you like to have personal flame war, but in nutshell ODBL is
share alike, so no problems here. I have two questions though:
1) Why we need CT in first place
2) What section 3 is about

Cheers,
Peter.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 19 July 2010 06:18, TimSC  wrote:
> On 18/07/10 19:39, John Smith wrote:
>>
>> On 19 July 2010 04:30, TimSC  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Also, if we really cared about share-alike, we would have it apply to
>>> "produced works" - that would encourage companies to give back.
>>>
>>
>> Judging by a same straw poll, very few people cared about SA extending
>> to produced works, and the ODBL has been drafted specifically to avoid
>> this.
>>
>>
>> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/2009-December/000753.html
>>
>> Most cared mostly about attribution and share alike on the data only.
>>
>
> It's not a question of OSMF member support, I am talking about how
> share-alike encourages business to share data with OSM.

Then why mention produced work, since ODBL and cc-by-sa both encourage
sharing the underlying data?

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[TimSC]

On 18/07/10 19:39, John Smith wrote:

On 19 July 2010 04:30, TimSC  wrote:
   

Also, if we really cared about share-alike, we would have it apply to
"produced works" - that would encourage companies to give back.
 

Judging by a same straw poll, very few people cared about SA extending
to produced works, and the ODBL has been drafted specifically to avoid
this.

http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/2009-December/000753.html

Most cared mostly about attribution and share alike on the data only.
   
It's not a question of OSMF member support, I am talking about how 
share-alike encourages business to share data with OSM.


TimSC


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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Anthony]

On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 2:11 PM, SteveC  wrote:
>
> The companies I talk to today come down in to two camps on PD. The first
> basically lick their lips and want us to go PD so they don't have to
> contribute anything (in effect make their business easier) and the second
> think it would be nuts because then the project wouldn't have long term
> growth potential and would probably die and fragment like BSD did etc etc
> etc.
>
> I'd count the second group as the brighter ones.
>

That's interesting, because last time you commented on it, you said "it
would be much better to move OSM to PD or CC0 for CloudMade and all the
other companies".  Glad to see you're being more honest about it.
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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[andrzej zaborowski]

On 18 July 2010 12:31, Frederik Ramm  wrote:
> andrzej zaborowski wrote:
>>
>> AFAIK the majority of data currently in OSM in Poland comes from that
>> other project, which still has lots more contributors than OSM here.
>
> Is it totally hopeless to contact these contributors and ask them for their
> agreement?

That's kind of what I'd like to do when we know exactly what we want
them to agree to.  Currently we don't.

However my current thinking is for these contributors to be able to
opt out, rather than opt in.  I know that is not legally the right way
to do it, but since this whole situation is legally blurred and I'd
feel morally okay that way, I can probably take the risk of somebody
getting upset on me.

Technically I can't contact all of the authors because the project I
talked about takes anonymous contributions through their bugzilla, and
even if it didn't, they don't have per-object history, their
repository is a CVS of text files with 9 years of commit history.  We
also know they had some amount of imports but documentation is scarce
(mostly in the form or forums).

Cheers

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 19 July 2010 05:37, Richard Weait  wrote:
> You are creating yet another theoretical situation, John.  Suddenly,
> in your perspective, the community is clamouring for the next license
> change and the next license change after that?  I don't see it
> happening.

If you are going to get picky at least use the right term,
hypothetical, since theories can be tested and at this point in time
they can't be, that doesn't mean they won't be in future, which is why
section 3 of the new CTs in incompatible with existing data. If things
are so certainly going to stay more or less as they are, what is the
harm in defining 'free and open' more explicitly to include an
attribution/share alike licenses only?

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Richard Weait]

On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 3:20 PM, John Smith  wrote:
> On 19 July 2010 05:17, John Smith  wrote:
>> On 19 July 2010 05:12, Richard Weait  wrote:
>>> Only if a later license change were to go non-SA.  An hypothetical
>>> situation that you have created.
>>
>> I'm not the only one, since some people are already proposing to push
>> a change to CC0 after the CTs are agreed to.
>>
>
> This keeps bringing up the issue of OSM's whiter than white copyright
> policy, and what happens if the license does change in future to
> non-share alike, do we start purging more data from the main data
> base, how many times would this be acceptable before people stopped
> contributing?

You are creating yet another theoretical situation, John.  Suddenly,
in your perspective, the community is clamouring for the next license
change and the next license change after that?  I don't see it
happening.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 19 July 2010 05:17, John Smith  wrote:
> On 19 July 2010 05:12, Richard Weait  wrote:
>> Only if a later license change were to go non-SA.  An hypothetical
>> situation that you have created.
>
> I'm not the only one, since some people are already proposing to push
> a change to CC0 after the CTs are agreed to.
>

This keeps bringing up the issue of OSM's whiter than white copyright
policy, and what happens if the license does change in future to
non-share alike, do we start purging more data from the main data
base, how many times would this be acceptable before people stopped
contributing?

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 19 July 2010 05:12, Richard Weait  wrote:
> Only if a later license change were to go non-SA.  An hypothetical
> situation that you have created.

I'm not the only one, since some people are already proposing to push
a change to CC0 after the CTs are agreed to.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Richard Weait]

On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 2:01 PM, John Smith  wrote:
> On 19 July 2010 03:54, SteveC  wrote:
>> John, you're painting a dystopian view based on a couple of key things - 
>> that 1) nearmap would never change their mind and 2) the 'same thing' could 
>> happen at any point.
>
> The email I received from their CEO was fairly definite about the map
> data being share alike.

And under ODbL the map data is share alike.

>> 1) I think their mind could be changed, maybe by giving them a more positive 
>> view on the process that led to this license, the people behind it and so 
>> on. Perhaps they have been given a dystopian view of the license?
>
> I never said they didn't agree to the ODBL, but that the new CTs,
> specifically section 3, wasn't going to be compatible, even if ODBL
> is.

Only if a later license change were to go non-SA.  An hypothetical
situation that you have created.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 19 July 2010 04:30, TimSC  wrote:
> Also, if we really cared about share-alike, we would have it apply to
> "produced works" - that would encourage companies to give back.

Judging by a same straw poll, very few people cared about SA extending
to produced works, and the ODBL has been drafted specifically to avoid
this.

http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/2009-December/000753.html

Most cared mostly about attribution and share alike on the data only.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[TimSC]

On 18/07/10 19:11, SteveC wrote:


The companies I talk to today come down in to two camps on PD. The first 
basically lick their lips and want us to go PD so they don't have to contribute 
anything (in effect make their business easier) and the second think it would 
be nuts because then the project wouldn't have long term growth potential and 
would probably die and fragment like BSD did etc etc etc.

I'd count the second group as the brighter ones.
   
And yet BSD continues to be maintained and updated, while coexisting 
with a similar share-alike project (Linux). So that shows how much most 
companies know. I don't see BSD as much more or less fragmented than 
linux (given the whole Google/Android kernel branch being left to rot.)


Also, if we really cared about share-alike, we would have it apply to 
"produced works" - that would encourage companies to give back.


TimSC


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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 19 July 2010 04:11, SteveC  wrote:
> The companies I talk to today come down in to two camps on PD. The first 
> basically lick their lips and want us to go PD so they don't have to 
> contribute anything (in effect make their business easier) and the second 
> think it would be nuts because then the project wouldn't have long term 
> growth potential and would probably die and fragment like BSD did etc etc etc.

I'm not talking about end users of the data, but companies suppling
either aerial imagery or other data, like AND for example, how would
they feel if all attribution was stripped from their contributions to
OSM?

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 19 July 2010 04:08, SteveC  wrote:
> Do you think nearmap are being reasonable?
>
> I don't think they are.

Why are we changing to another share alike license if this isn't
reasonable? I fail to see the logic here.

> There are a variety of downsides with working with open communities - one of 
> them is that they are flexible and change over time with many different 
> opinions. A bunch of people here wanted that change in section 3 (do you 
> agree that was reasonable?). I don't think we can change OSM sufficiently to 
> cater to nearmaps terms of interaction if they are that static - or the 
> hundreds of other companies who will then have their own demands and terms of 
> interaction.

As I said before, anyone who has used Nearmap imagery will not legally
be able to agree to the current CT because it would breach their
contract with Nearmap, on the other hand is it reasonable of OSM to
force people into an open ended agreement about what an open and free
license might be 10 years from now?

> Someone, somewhere (namely the LWG) has to make a balance between those who 
> want nearmap and those who want those CT changes. I think they should 
> probably go with the new CTs sadly rather than go with nearmap. It's not a 
> nice choice but I don't see any alternatives, do you?

This is the unfortunate conclusion that seems to be occurring, so
basically there will be a fork and as unfortunate as it will be the
new CT is too unreasonable to my pragmatic goals of build an open map
of Australia, as I said before it would be about the same as removing
the Tiger data and any data derived from it from the US, where would
the US end up?

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[SteveC]

On Jul 18, 2010, at 8:05 PM, John Smith wrote:

> On 19 July 2010 03:56, SteveC  wrote:
>> We had this discussion years ago now and they were fine with it. As with 
>> everything else, they weren't allowed by legal to say anything publicly and 
>> were just waiting for the actual changeover.
> 
> That covers current licenses, what about if OSM goes CC0/PD like some
> would like and which the current CTs would allow more easily?

I think all the individuals that I spoke to then have since left Y!

The companies I talk to today come down in to two camps on PD. The first 
basically lick their lips and want us to go PD so they don't have to contribute 
anything (in effect make their business easier) and the second think it would 
be nuts because then the project wouldn't have long term growth potential and 
would probably die and fragment like BSD did etc etc etc.

I'd count the second group as the brighter ones.

Steve

stevecoast.com


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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[SteveC]

On Jul 18, 2010, at 8:01 PM, John Smith wrote:

> On 19 July 2010 03:54, SteveC  wrote:
>> John, you're painting a dystopian view based on a couple of key things - 
>> that 1) nearmap would never change their mind and 2) the 'same thing' could 
>> happen at any point.
> 
> The email I received from their CEO was fairly definite about the map
> data being share alike.
> 
>> 1) I think their mind could be changed, maybe by giving them a more positive 
>> view on the process that led to this license, the people behind it and so 
>> on. Perhaps they have been given a dystopian view of the license?
> 
> I never said they didn't agree to the ODBL, but that the new CTs,
> specifically section 3, wasn't going to be compatible, even if ODBL
> is.

Do you think nearmap are being reasonable?

I don't think they are.

There are a variety of downsides with working with open communities - one of 
them is that they are flexible and change over time with many different 
opinions. A bunch of people here wanted that change in section 3 (do you agree 
that was reasonable?). I don't think we can change OSM sufficiently to cater to 
nearmaps terms of interaction if they are that static - or the hundreds of 
other companies who will then have their own demands and terms of interaction.

Someone, somewhere (namely the LWG) has to make a balance between those who 
want nearmap and those who want those CT changes. I think they should probably 
go with the new CTs sadly rather than go with nearmap. It's not a nice choice 
but I don't see any alternatives, do you?

Steve

stevecoast.com


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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 19 July 2010 03:56, SteveC  wrote:
> We had this discussion years ago now and they were fine with it. As with 
> everything else, they weren't allowed by legal to say anything publicly and 
> were just waiting for the actual changeover.

That covers current licenses, what about if OSM goes CC0/PD like some
would like and which the current CTs would allow more easily?

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 19 July 2010 04:02, Sami Dalouche  wrote:
> If the move is for pure theoretical, GNU/Stallman-like ideology, then it
> is likely to create way more damage than it would save.
> However, if the move is about saving the project from a legal
> perspective, then it's probably better to start tackling the issue now
> rather than having a court shut down the project 5 years from now when
> most of the planet is mapped...

You have it backwards, it's about people trying to prevent companies
taking advantage of OSM, and OSM getting them shut down if it needed
to go that far.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 19 July 2010 03:54, SteveC  wrote:
> John, you're painting a dystopian view based on a couple of key things - that 
> 1) nearmap would never change their mind and 2) the 'same thing' could happen 
> at any point.

The email I received from their CEO was fairly definite about the map
data being share alike.

> 1) I think their mind could be changed, maybe by giving them a more positive 
> view on the process that led to this license, the people behind it and so on. 
> Perhaps they have been given a dystopian view of the license?

I never said they didn't agree to the ODBL, but that the new CTs,
specifically section 3, wasn't going to be compatible, even if ODBL
is.

> 2) I don't think anyone wants to start relicensing any time soon after the 
> odbl gets implemented or rejected. I think everyone would want a holiday.

Some people are threatening to have the license changed to CC0
already, how serious they are about that is another matter.

> And anyway, you're comparing it to an absolute situation of status quo - that 
> we all just hum along on CCBYSA because nearmap won't work with us. We can't 
> do that. We all (well nearly all) know that CCBYSA just doesn't work, so 
> you're saying no to the ODbL, no to PD too (because nearmap wont like that 
> either as its not SA)... You can't go through life being a big bag of 'no' 
> like this because nothing will ever happen. The LWG is trying to make a bunch 
> of reasonable decisions that will inevitably disenfranchise some people. They 
> are trying to minimise the number of people disenfranchised and the amount of 
> it, and if you just say 'no' to everything you just look like an unreasonable 
> extremist and risk nobody spending time on your otherwise reasonable points.

I'm not just saying no any more, I'm already past that, if the CTs
aren't amended we are prepared to fork the aussie data, there is just
too much data going to be lost and suddenly things go from OSM having
a whiter than white respect to copyright, to being overly messy,
either cc-by-sa is valid or it isn't and in which case the existing
data carries on.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Sami Dalouche]

Hi,

I am a complete outsider regarding the licensing debate (and, to be
honest, to the whole OSM project... I barely started mapping a few
hiking trails).

That being said, here is the main thing I wonder about :

**Is the license change a real choice or a kind of legal obligation ?**

The reason I ask is because, by looking at this thread, I feel like some
people view it as important, and others see how depressing it is for the
mapping community... But do we have the choice ?

If the move is for pure theoretical, GNU/Stallman-like ideology, then it
is likely to create way more damage than it would save. 
However, if the move is about saving the project from a legal
perspective, then it's probably better to start tackling the issue now
rather than having a court shut down the project 5 years from now when
most of the planet is mapped...

regards,
Sami Dalouche

On Mon, 2010-07-19 at 03:46 +1000, John Smith wrote:
> On 19 July 2010 03:36, SteveC  wrote:
> > Why? Because the project is growing very fast and attracting more data all 
> > the time. If Google or Nearmap don't want to play ball that's fine - just 
> > look at the hundreds of other companies and organisations that do, like 
> > Bing and MapQuest's announcements at SOTM for example.
> 
> Nearmap isn't dictating any terms, other than you can only use their
> data under a share alike license so no need to lump them in with
> Google. However I have a fairly good idea how much information has
> been added in regional areas that wouldn't exist otherwise.
> 
> > I agree it might be bad in the short term that we lose some aerial imagery 
> > (but I posit that would only happen because you give nearmap the impression 
> > that the community will do whatever they say, if you ask them to join us 
> > from the position that this is the direction we're going, I posit they 
> > would be more positive). But in the longer term I guarantee we'll have lots 
> > of other sources of data and imagery. It will be a temporary setback, even 
> > if it happens.
> 
> You go on and on about how if 50% disappear wait a short time and
> it'll magically appear within a short period of time, I call BS, if
> the tiger data was dumped from OSM how long exactly would it take to
> regather it? How demoralising would it be on the people that fixed up
> the tiger data? Combined with people that don't respond or don't agree
> it would set the Aussie community back to the stone age effectively,
> and it will actively turn away new contributors because they won't
> want the same thing to happen to their efforts.
> 
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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[SteveC]

On Jul 18, 2010, at 7:48 PM, John Smith wrote:

> On 19 July 2010 03:36, SteveC  wrote:
>> It's similar to those people saying that we should do whatever Google says 
>> we should do, so they can just use our data.
> 
> Since you're bringing up Google, what about Yahoo, any official word
> from them on ODBL or the new CTs?

We had this discussion years ago now and they were fine with it. As with 
everything else, they weren't allowed by legal to say anything publicly and 
were just waiting for the actual changeover.

Perhaps naively I told them it wouldn't take too long :-)

Steve

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[SteveC]

On Jul 18, 2010, at 7:46 PM, John Smith wrote:

> On 19 July 2010 03:36, SteveC  wrote:
>> Why? Because the project is growing very fast and attracting more data all 
>> the time. If Google or Nearmap don't want to play ball that's fine - just 
>> look at the hundreds of other companies and organisations that do, like Bing 
>> and MapQuest's announcements at SOTM for example.
> 
> Nearmap isn't dictating any terms, other than you can only use their
> data under a share alike license so no need to lump them in with
> Google. However I have a fairly good idea how much information has
> been added in regional areas that wouldn't exist otherwise.
> 
>> I agree it might be bad in the short term that we lose some aerial imagery 
>> (but I posit that would only happen because you give nearmap the impression 
>> that the community will do whatever they say, if you ask them to join us 
>> from the position that this is the direction we're going, I posit they would 
>> be more positive). But in the longer term I guarantee we'll have lots of 
>> other sources of data and imagery. It will be a temporary setback, even if 
>> it happens.
> 
> You go on and on about how if 50% disappear wait a short time and
> it'll magically appear within a short period of time,

Could you point to where I go on and on about it? I'm aware of only mentioning 
it once, in the above email?

> I call BS, if
> the tiger data was dumped from OSM how long exactly would it take to
> regather it? How demoralising would it be on the people that fixed up
> the tiger data? Combined with people that don't respond or don't agree
> it would set the Aussie community back to the stone age effectively,
> and it will actively turn away new contributors because they won't
> want the same thing to happen to their efforts.

John, you're painting a dystopian view based on a couple of key things - that 
1) nearmap would never change their mind and 2) the 'same thing' could happen 
at any point.

1) I think their mind could be changed, maybe by giving them a more positive 
view on the process that led to this license, the people behind it and so on. 
Perhaps they have been given a dystopian view of the license?

2) I don't think anyone wants to start relicensing any time soon after the odbl 
gets implemented or rejected. I think everyone would want a holiday.

And anyway, you're comparing it to an absolute situation of status quo - that 
we all just hum along on CCBYSA because nearmap won't work with us. We can't do 
that. We all (well nearly all) know that CCBYSA just doesn't work, so you're 
saying no to the ODbL, no to PD too (because nearmap wont like that either as 
its not SA)... You can't go through life being a big bag of 'no' like this 
because nothing will ever happen. The LWG is trying to make a bunch of 
reasonable decisions that will inevitably disenfranchise some people. They are 
trying to minimise the number of people disenfranchised and the amount of it, 
and if you just say 'no' to everything you just look like an unreasonable 
extremist and risk nobody spending time on your otherwise reasonable points.

Steve

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 19 July 2010 03:36, SteveC  wrote:
> It's similar to those people saying that we should do whatever Google says we 
> should do, so they can just use our data.

Since you're bringing up Google, what about Yahoo, any official word
from them on ODBL or the new CTs?

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 19 July 2010 03:36, SteveC  wrote:
> Why? Because the project is growing very fast and attracting more data all 
> the time. If Google or Nearmap don't want to play ball that's fine - just 
> look at the hundreds of other companies and organisations that do, like Bing 
> and MapQuest's announcements at SOTM for example.

Nearmap isn't dictating any terms, other than you can only use their
data under a share alike license so no need to lump them in with
Google. However I have a fairly good idea how much information has
been added in regional areas that wouldn't exist otherwise.

> I agree it might be bad in the short term that we lose some aerial imagery 
> (but I posit that would only happen because you give nearmap the impression 
> that the community will do whatever they say, if you ask them to join us from 
> the position that this is the direction we're going, I posit they would be 
> more positive). But in the longer term I guarantee we'll have lots of other 
> sources of data and imagery. It will be a temporary setback, even if it 
> happens.

You go on and on about how if 50% disappear wait a short time and
it'll magically appear within a short period of time, I call BS, if
the tiger data was dumped from OSM how long exactly would it take to
regather it? How demoralising would it be on the people that fixed up
the tiger data? Combined with people that don't respond or don't agree
it would set the Aussie community back to the stone age effectively,
and it will actively turn away new contributors because they won't
want the same thing to happen to their efforts.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[SteveC]

On Jul 18, 2010, at 2:59 PM, John Smith wrote:

> On 18 July 2010 22:51, Frederik Ramm  wrote:
>> Did imports and Nearmap tracing in Australia start before the relicensing
>> effort, or were you simply not aware of it, or did you not take it
>> seriously?
> 
> Most likely ODBL is fine, it's the CTs that is the biggest hurdle.

Allowing one company or organisation to dictate the projects license or 
direction isn't a good idea.

It's similar to those people saying that we should do whatever Google says we 
should do, so they can just use our data.

Why? Because the project is growing very fast and attracting more data all the 
time. If Google or Nearmap don't want to play ball that's fine - just look at 
the hundreds of other companies and organisations that do, like Bing and 
MapQuest's announcements at SOTM for example.

Is it really a valid argument that we should do whatever Google or Nearmap say 
we should do, when all of their competitors are happy to work with us?

I agree it might be bad in the short term that we lose some aerial imagery (but 
I posit that would only happen because you give nearmap the impression that the 
community will do whatever they say, if you ask them to join us from the 
position that this is the direction we're going, I posit they would be more 
positive). But in the longer term I guarantee we'll have lots of other sources 
of data and imagery. It will be a temporary setback, even if it happens.

Steve

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[SteveC]

On Jul 17, 2010, at 12:06 PM, 80n wrote:
> In other words, we were wrong, we chose the wrong license out of ignorance. 
> Shit happens.
> 
> Yeah, shit happens, OSM becomes outrageously successful and nobody abuses the 
> spirit of the license.  What kind of shit is that?

People abuse it all the time, cf Nike and many others.

I'm not surprised it's low level anyway right now, the amount of abuse will be 
a function of the completeness of the data. We're not really a routable dataset 
just yet and most of the planet is missing address data. As we approach these 
points fast, the amount of abuse will go up with it.

Anyway. Let me make two points:

My take on the idea of having a vote on whether we'd theoretically move to the 
ODbL so long as everyone else does... is that it's basically just a vote on 
whether to have a vote. It's also without any consequences.

The consequences part: Because nothing will really happen either way if the 
majority of this proposed step vote yes or no, that means that the incentives 
to vote yes or no are vastly different than saying yes or no to the actual 
license change. That means that people will vote differently and perhaps to the 
extent that it will be uncorrelated with an actual license change decision. In 
other words, your reasons for voting yes or no 'theoretically' are very 
different to voting yes or no in actuality. If anyone here has a degree in 
economics or psychology they'd be able to wave around all kinds of textbooks 
showing how hard it is to measure things like this when you have no real 
incentives - for example asking people if they'd pay for and go to a gym to get 
fit - we all know people say they'd like to do those things and never do.

Based on the theoretical vote being wildly inaccurate and also not really 
affecting anything, I say the LWG should just push ahead with the plan. If 
everyone catastrophically says 'no' to the ODbL (which I doubt, but hey) then 
they can go back to the drawing board with a concrete result. If we all agree, 
then we can just get on with mapping. But going back to the drawing board with 
a proxy to a vote - a vote on whether to have a vote - is incredibly flimsy and 
will just pull out everyone on the other side of the argument who'll charge 
that it was an invalid vote.

In sum, having a vote on whether to have a vote just slows us all down for no 
particular reason.

Therefore, just put the voluntary license change thing out there (so people can 
change if they want to) and continue with the rest of the plan. If it turns out 
to be awful and we lost lots of people (which I doubt) then you can consider 
things at that stage.

Oh and by the way, as a thought experiment - if 50% of people drop out due to 
the license change then you only have to wait a few months for the data to be 
put back in by other new people - go and look at the user growth and data 
growth graphs. It's really not as bad as it looks, even under a bad scenario 
like 50%.



My second point - have a think on what affect you're all having on the people 
in the LWG. They've now been working on this for _years_ meeting every week. 
That's a huge amount of effort and investment. These are good people doing 
their best to find a way forward. But, every time they do something, the 
mailing lists fill up with new things they should do which leads to a steady 
state - they complete one task and then are given a new one to do without 
actually approaching the goal. They have to balance this with a fair number of 
people complaining that it's taking them forever to get anywhere. That's not a 
fun situation to be in. For years.

Very few of us here with all these opinions and time on the mailing list - 
whether they are good, bad or ugly opinions - have the time, whatever our 
position for or against the license etc, to sit through this stuff week after 
week in the working group and push this stuff forward.

I'm worried that we're going to burn the guys on the LWG out. They must feel 
like they're in some kafka-esque dialogue with no upside for them.

They chose to be on the working group and do all this work of course, but the 
worst thing that could happen is that they conclude that it will take another 
couple of years to get anywhere and decide to go and do something more useful 
with their time. I know for a fact that some of them don't even read some of 
these mailing lists anymore because of it. So why don't we just cool off a bit 
and give them a nod of thanks before diving on with this stuff - whatever 
direction it goes in.

Steve

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Kevin Peat]

On 17 July 2010 20:40, Frederik Ramm  wrote:


> It should really be "Would you find it acceptable if OSMF relicensed the
> whole dataset to ODbL without asking for consent from individual
> contributors, thereby making sure that there is no data loss, but
> disregarding individuals who might be against the change?"
>
> If OSMF were to do that, they would likely be sued by a number of
> principled objectors; we'd have to factor in a legal budget to deal with
> that. It should not be too much because those legal advisers that have told
> us that the CC-BY-SA would likely not hold in court would simply have to
> tell the judge the same ;)
>
>
I would rather we just relicensed and if contributors object then we delete
their contributions. That way I would think it unlikely anyone would get
sued and we'd lose the absolute minimum of data, rather than deleting loads
of data just because some contributors haven't kept their email addresses
up-to-date even though they would probably agree to the change if we could
contact them.

We could ask everyone upfront if they were likely to object to the change
and so remove most of the uncertainty there might be.

I don't think this is like the CDDB case at all as they had less honourable
motives as I understand them.

Kevin
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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Shalabh]

On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 8:33 PM, Chris Fleming  wrote:
>  On 17/07/10 20:40, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Michael Barabanov wrote:
>>>
>>> A poll could be something like: "Would you find a it acceptable if OSMF
>>> relicensed the whole dataset to ODBL without any data loss".
>>
>> It should really be "Would you find it acceptable if OSMF relicensed the
>> whole dataset to ODbL without asking for consent from individual
>> contributors, thereby making sure that there is no data loss, but
>> disregarding individuals who might be against the change?"
>>
>> If OSMF were to do that, they would likely be sued by a number of
>> principled objectors; we'd have to factor in a legal budget to deal with
>> that. It should not be too much because those legal advisers that have told
>> us that the CC-BY-SA would likely not hold in court would simply have to
>> tell the judge the same ;)
>>
>> Problem is, the principled objectors could also decline to sue OSMF and
>> instead threaten to sue users of OSM data that contains their contributions.
>> *We* believe such threats to be empty, but consider our users - one of the
>> reasons for ODbL is to achieve a legal certainty about using our data. Would
>> all this not lead to people *again* shying away from OSM for fear of some
>> poisoned bits of data?
>>
> I don't think that Michael was actually proposing that we actually do this,
> more just use it to get an idea of if people agree to the principle of
> moving to ODbL if the "data loss" issue wasn't an issue.
>
> I think that the majority would, there will be a few exceptions but IMHO
> ODbL is a much better license. From what I can tell most of the current
> descent is around what to do about CC-BY-SA data imports where the provider
> can't or won't relicense, or contributers that we can't contact.
>
> Cheers
> Chris

I dont think this is getting more inclusive at all, though the subject
of the message suggests so. For OSM users like me, who are only
interested in contributing GPS tracks and sketching JOSM tracks and
not at all bothered about the legalese, this is absolute nonsense.

For one, I dont care if my data gets used by anyone and everyone else,
much like Frederik Ramm. So, if someone could, in real layman terms
explain to me what all this means, I would appreciate. And I assume
and hope, there are many more users like me.

Cheers,
Shalabh
>
>
>
>
> --
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> w: www.chrisfleming.org
>
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Chris Fleming]

 On 17/07/10 20:40, Frederik Ramm wrote:

Hi,

Michael Barabanov wrote:
A poll could be something like: "Would you find a it acceptable if 
OSMF relicensed the whole dataset to ODBL without any data loss".


It should really be "Would you find it acceptable if OSMF relicensed 
the whole dataset to ODbL without asking for consent from individual 
contributors, thereby making sure that there is no data loss, but 
disregarding individuals who might be against the change?"


If OSMF were to do that, they would likely be sued by a number of 
principled objectors; we'd have to factor in a legal budget to deal 
with that. It should not be too much because those legal advisers that 
have told us that the CC-BY-SA would likely not hold in court would 
simply have to tell the judge the same ;)


Problem is, the principled objectors could also decline to sue OSMF 
and instead threaten to sue users of OSM data that contains their 
contributions. *We* believe such threats to be empty, but consider our 
users - one of the reasons for ODbL is to achieve a legal certainty 
about using our data. Would all this not lead to people *again* shying 
away from OSM for fear of some poisoned bits of data?


I don't think that Michael was actually proposing that we actually do 
this, more just use it to get an idea of if people agree to the 
principle of moving to ODbL if the "data loss" issue wasn't an issue.


I think that the majority would, there will be a few exceptions but IMHO 
ODbL is a much better license. From what I can tell most of the current 
descent is around what to do about CC-BY-SA data imports where the 
provider can't or won't relicense, or contributers that we can't contact.


Cheers
Chris




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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 18 July 2010 22:51, Frederik Ramm  wrote:
> Did imports and Nearmap tracing in Australia start before the relicensing
> effort, or were you simply not aware of it, or did you not take it
> seriously?

Most likely ODBL is fine, it's the CTs that is the biggest hurdle.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Frederik Ramm]

John,

John Smith wrote:

It kind of rubs me the wrong way when anyone brings up problems and
the first response (and usually the only one) is to always fob off the
work and expect those effected the most to be doing all the leg work
to clean up the mess this license change over is causing or going to
cause.


It was an honest question - I don't know the Polish project Andrzej was 
talking of and it may just be possible to somehow email the contributors 
and ask them. It didn't sound like a project where they have imported 
tons of stuff from commercial/government providers like you have in 
Australia, it sounded more like you'd be working with human beings.



I can't see this ending well, it'll completely devastate and
demoralise the Australian community.


Did imports and Nearmap tracing in Australia start before the 
relicensing effort, or were you simply not aware of it, or did you not 
take it seriously?


Bye
Frederik

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 18 July 2010 22:19, Simon Ward  wrote:
> This also shows that simply asking if contributors will allow their
> contributions to come under the ODbL is not enough.  I imagine many have

That may be ok, but the CTs go a step further and have future licenses
as being fairly open ended, which makes your next point valid:

> done both their own surveys, the data from which they might be happy to
> relicense, and derivatives of other data (Nearmap, Yahoo!, etc), which
> they may not be able to relicense.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Simon Ward]

On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 09:54:36PM +1000, John Smith wrote:
> It just got pointed out to me, but anyone that has ever derived data
> from Nearmap can't agree to the new Contributor Terms, not to mention
> new users that already agreed to the new CTs shouldn't be deriving
> data from Nearmap.

This also shows that simply asking if contributors will allow their
contributions to come under the ODbL is not enough.  I imagine many have
done both their own surveys, the data from which they might be happy to
relicense, and derivatives of other data (Nearmap, Yahoo!, etc), which
they may not be able to relicense.

Simon
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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 18 July 2010 21:43, Simon Ward  wrote:
> Is this an issue with the third (licensing/relicensing/sublicensing)
> clause?  I never fully agreed with it in the first place.

Yup, the license could be changed to a non-share alike license in
future, and some people are trying to push things toward PD/CC0
licenses.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

It just got pointed out to me, but anyone that has ever derived data
from Nearmap can't agree to the new Contributor Terms, not to mention
new users that already agreed to the new CTs shouldn't be deriving
data from Nearmap.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Simon Ward]

On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 09:19:53PM +1000, John Smith wrote:
> On 18 July 2010 21:07, John Smith  wrote:
> > but they haven't commented about the contributor terms, I sent them an
> > email about this but I'm waiting to hear back. If they balk at either
> > that would mean everything mapped from their imagery, which in several
> > rural and regional areas is considerable, would disappear as well.
> 
> I just received a reply, Nearmap will only allow derived data to be
> licensed under a share alike license, which means any data derived
> from their imagery, while compatible with ODBL, isn't compatible with
> the new CTs.

Is this an issue with the third (licensing/relicensing/sublicensing)
clause?  I never fully agreed with it in the first place.

If it is changed to allow relicensing to another share alike license
(probably quite difficult to describe legally without, uh, writing a
license) with the 2/3 majority would that be acceptable?

If the alternative licenses are completely removed from the contributor
terms would that fix it?

Is there an issue with using the DbCL for the contents of the database?

Simon
-- 
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simple system that works.—John Gall


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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 18 July 2010 21:07, John Smith  wrote:
> but they haven't commented about the contributor terms, I sent them an
> email about this but I'm waiting to hear back. If they balk at either
> that would mean everything mapped from their imagery, which in several
> rural and regional areas is considerable, would disappear as well.

I just received a reply, Nearmap will only allow derived data to be
licensed under a share alike license, which means any data derived
from their imagery, while compatible with ODBL, isn't compatible with
the new CTs.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 18 July 2010 20:31, Frederik Ramm  wrote:
> Is it totally hopeless to contact these contributors and ask them for their
> agreement?

It kind of rubs me the wrong way when anyone brings up problems and
the first response (and usually the only one) is to always fob off the
work and expect those effected the most to be doing all the leg work
to clean up the mess this license change over is causing or going to
cause.

Especially when the new Contributor Terms aren't even attribution or
share alike compatible, which means that only CC0/PD and relicensed
data will be compatible.

Beyond the government imported data in Australia (about 1/4 to 1/3rd
the current data) we also have Nearmap Aerial imagery, while they
might agree with ODBL, they may not agree with Contributor Terms, at
present their terms explicitly state derived data can only be licensed
under cc-by-sa, they have been asked about ODBL and may agree to it
but they haven't commented about the contributor terms, I sent them an
email about this but I'm waiting to hear back. If they balk at either
that would mean everything mapped from their imagery, which in several
rural and regional areas is considerable, would disappear as well.

This is before we figure out how much other data won't be transferred
across due to non-responses or people that disagree with the new
license.

I can't see this ending well, it'll completely devastate and
demoralise the Australian community.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

andrzej zaborowski wrote:

AFAIK the majority of data currently in OSM in Poland comes from that
other project, which still has lots more contributors than OSM here.


Is it totally hopeless to contact these contributors and ask them for 
their agreement?


Bye
Frederik

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[andrzej zaborowski]

Hi,

On 17 July 2010 10:34, Frederik Ramm  wrote:
> Michael Barabanov wrote:
>>
>> 1. OSMF does change the license without any regard; people who are against
>> ODBL get pissed off and stop contributing (lost for OSM?). No data loss from
>> the database.
>
>> 2. OSMF does not do that; contributions of people who are against ODBL are
>> deleted, people who are against ODBL stop contributing anyway.  Potential
>> data loss.
>
> This is true but I am pretty convinced that (1) would lead to people saying:
> "Ah, OpenStreetMap, those guys that re-licence their stuff at will." - We
> would be thrown in with people like CDDB.

Ironically I wouldn't mind if OSMF did that, this way taking the blame
for it on itself.  Me and other mappers in my area have spent
man-months of work adapting and merging somebody else's CC-By-SA map
data and none of us will be able to accept the Contributor Terms.  So
if OSMF takes the burden of telling the people who collected that data
"sorry, your license wasn't valid", then all the better for us :)

(some background)
AFAIK the majority of data currently in OSM in Poland comes from that
other project, which still has lots more contributors than OSM here.
Because of this, and the license limbo state, most OSM mappers in
Poland are currently spinning on idle unsure of whether all their work
will soon be removed from osm and will only be available in an old
planet snapshot, unusable for users of the data who would have to join
the two dataset (new osm and old osm).  Any new edits are also based
on that data so mostly anything you do is bound to be removed.
There's lots of uncertainty on the forums, some people keep on
adapting and importing more data, then on the other hand some of the
users registered after May 12 are being told that they in particular
can't use this data for their own area because they have signed up on
different license conditions than older users and may be infringing on
that other project's license if they did (but then maybe not).  Yet
other users would be happy to register a new user account and already
start wiping out Poland and start mapping from scratch just so we can
plunge forward instead of waiting indefinitely.  This is not helped by
the legal working group not answering to these mappers' questions,
several people on the polish forum said they had mailed the legal
alias about lwg's opinion on this By-SA data to never get a response.
I tried raising the question on the legal list at least once and also
never got any reply (other than a RichardF's unhelpful comment that
the other project's license is invalid then).

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Michael Barabanov wrote:
A poll could be something like: "Would you find a it acceptable if OSMF 
relicensed the whole dataset to ODBL without any data loss".


It should really be "Would you find it acceptable if OSMF relicensed the 
whole dataset to ODbL without asking for consent from individual 
contributors, thereby making sure that there is no data loss, but 
disregarding individuals who might be against the change?"


If OSMF were to do that, they would likely be sued by a number of 
principled objectors; we'd have to factor in a legal budget to deal with 
that. It should not be too much because those legal advisers that have 
told us that the CC-BY-SA would likely not hold in court would simply 
have to tell the judge the same ;)


Problem is, the principled objectors could also decline to sue OSMF and 
instead threaten to sue users of OSM data that contains their 
contributions. *We* believe such threats to be empty, but consider our 
users - one of the reasons for ODbL is to achieve a legal certainty 
about using our data. Would all this not lead to people *again* shying 
away from OSM for fear of some poisoned bits of data?


Bye
Frederik

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Michael Barabanov]

A poll could be something like: "Would you find a it acceptable if OSMF
relicensed the whole dataset to ODBL without any data loss". If nothing
else, that'd give an idea of how people feel about licensing vs data itself.

On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 9:10 AM, Frederik Ramm  wrote:

> Hi,
>
>
> 80n wrote:
>
>> We have never said to any contributors that their data is protected.  The
>> only stipulation OSM ever made was that contributors had to agree to license
>> their data in a certain way before they were allowed to upload it.
>>
>
> If we have really never said nor implied that our contributors' data was
> protected, then I'd say it is morally ok to simply relicense the whole thing
> ODbL and be done with it.
>
> I do however believe that this would lead to an outcry because contributors
> believed otherwise. Who, if not we, has created that belief?
>
>
>  But, it's an interesting point that maybe ODbL provides the protection
>> that we all thought CC-BY-SA was giving.  However it fails to do this.
>>
>
> Depends on how you look at it, and this has been discussed endlessly. OSM
> is a project about data, and ODbL seems very well suited to protect that
> data(base), in an even stronger fashion than CC-BY-SA ever did (what with
> having to release intermediate databases which could have been kept
> proprietary under CC-BY-SA). At the same time it recognizes that trying to
> extend protection to non-data(base) things just reduces OSM's usefulness,
> and thus allows Produced Works to be published under any[*] license.
> Remember that the stated goal of OSM is to create a free world map, not to
> make sure some printed atlas or work of art somewhere is under a free
> license.
>
>
>  It is clear that ODbL does a lot more than just fix CC-BY-SA so that it
>> works for data.  Why is that?
>>
>
> ODbL is a new license, it is not a patch against CC-BY-SA. I see nothing
> wrong with that; it is a product of a long and arduous community process in
> which people with very different views about licensing and what's good and
> what's bad for the project have agreed on a workable middle ground that
> protects what is essential to the project and releases what is
> non-essential.
>
> As you know, those who invented CC-BY-SA tried to somehow adapt it for use
> with data, and came to the conclusion that they'd rather recommend all data
> be CC0. Which I still think is a good idea but I accept that I can't always
> have things my way if I want to be part of a community.
>
> Bye
> Frederik
>
> [*] "any" has always been my reading, however there are others who claim
> that ODbL does in fact not allow you to publish under any license, but it
> must be some kind of attribution license. Here's Richard Fairhurst's take on
> this:
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-gb/2010-June/006292.html
>
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Michael Barabanov]

> 1. OSMF does change the license without any regard; people who are against
>> ODBL get pissed off and stop contributing (lost for OSM?). No data loss from
>> the database.
>>
>
>  2. OSMF does not do that; contributions of people who are against ODBL are
>> deleted, people who are against ODBL stop contributing anyway.  Potential
>> data loss.
>>
>
> This is true but I am pretty convinced that (1) would lead to people
> saying: "Ah, OpenStreetMap, those guys that re-licence their stuff at will."
> - We would be thrown in with people like CDDB.
>

Not a great analogy as CDDB isn't really open, right?


>
> I think that there are people who are against ODbL but will continue
> contributing if they see that this is what most project members want. I
> think that this number will be much smaller if OSM is seen to ignore their
> contributors' will. But this is only my impression; maybe one should start a
> poll asking: "Would you find it morally acceptable to simply change the
> license without giving a damn for what contributors say?"


I think a poll would be good.  Perhaps with a different wording though:)

Here's another possible scenario: even if OSMF is not willing to do forced
relicensing, individual contributors may choose to effectively do so. Say
OSMF does remove the data from the main database (what? how? this is poorly
defined for all but trivial cases), but a contributor is convinced (by OSMF,
no less:)) that CC BY-SA is the same as PD for data, and copy-pastes removed
data back into the main database. Not so easy in case of complex relations
etc, but doable.  I wonder if that would be a widespread scenario.

Michael.


>
> Bye
> Frederik
>
> --
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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

80n wrote:
We have never said to any contributors that their data is protected.  
The only stipulation OSM ever made was that contributors had to agree to 
license their data in a certain way before they were allowed to upload 
it.


If we have really never said nor implied that our contributors' data was 
protected, then I'd say it is morally ok to simply relicense the whole 
thing ODbL and be done with it.


I do however believe that this would lead to an outcry because 
contributors believed otherwise. Who, if not we, has created that belief?


But, it's an interesting point that maybe ODbL provides the protection 
that we all thought CC-BY-SA was giving.  However it fails to do this.  


Depends on how you look at it, and this has been discussed endlessly. 
OSM is a project about data, and ODbL seems very well suited to protect 
that data(base), in an even stronger fashion than CC-BY-SA ever did 
(what with having to release intermediate databases which could have 
been kept proprietary under CC-BY-SA). At the same time it recognizes 
that trying to extend protection to non-data(base) things just reduces 
OSM's usefulness, and thus allows Produced Works to be published under 
any[*] license. Remember that the stated goal of OSM is to create a free 
world map, not to make sure some printed atlas or work of art somewhere 
is under a free license.


It is clear that ODbL does a lot more than just fix CC-BY-SA so that it 
works for data.  Why is that?


ODbL is a new license, it is not a patch against CC-BY-SA. I see nothing 
wrong with that; it is a product of a long and arduous community process 
in which people with very different views about licensing and what's 
good and what's bad for the project have agreed on a workable middle 
ground that protects what is essential to the project and releases what 
is non-essential.


As you know, those who invented CC-BY-SA tried to somehow adapt it for 
use with data, and came to the conclusion that they'd rather recommend 
all data be CC0. Which I still think is a good idea but I accept that I 
can't always have things my way if I want to be part of a community.


Bye
Frederik

[*] "any" has always been my reading, however there are others who claim 
that ODbL does in fact not allow you to publish under any license, but 
it must be some kind of attribution license. Here's Richard Fairhurst's 
take on this: 
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-gb/2010-June/006292.html


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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[80n]

On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 7:39 AM, Frederik Ramm  wrote:

> Hi,
>
>
> John Smith wrote:
>
>> On 17 July 2010 13:07, Michael Barabanov 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Consider two cases:
>>>
>>> 1. Current license does not cover the OSM data (I think that's the OSMF
>>> view).  In this  case, OSMF can just change to ODBL without asking
>>> anyone.
>>> 2. Current license does cover the OSM data. Then there's no need to
>>> change.
>>>
>>> Where's the issue?
>>>
>>
>> I made that exact point above some time ago and people umm'd and arr'd
>> and didn't give me a straight answer...
>>
>
> The answer is quite simply actually.
>
> For a long time we assumed that the current license did indeed work, and we
> essentially told everyone who signed up that their data was protected. They
> trusted us and assumed we had chosen the license well.
>
> We have never said to any contributors that their data is protected.  The
only stipulation OSM ever made was that contributors had to agree to license
their data in a certain way before they were allowed to upload it.  OSM
would never and could never make any kind of warranty about the protection
of user's contributions.

But, it's an interesting point that maybe ODbL provides the protection that
we all thought CC-BY-SA was giving.  However it fails to do this.  Produced
Works can be released under any license the publisher chooses.  If ODbL was
really trying to fix CC-BY-SA for data (and for us) then it would make much
more sense for Produced Works to only be publishable under a CC-BY-SA
license.

It is clear that ODbL does a lot more than just fix CC-BY-SA so that it
works for data.  Why is that?

80n
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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Anthony]

On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 2:39 AM, Frederik Ramm  wrote:

> We now know that anybody, at least in most jurisdictions and if he has a
> decent-sized legal budget and has not respect for ethics (i.e. is
> sufficiently evil), can effectively use our data as if it were unprotected.
> In other words, we were wrong, we chose the wrong license out of ignorance.
> Shit happens.
>

I'm going to reiterate the point I made above in another way.  However, I'd
first like to point out that I disagree that it is "evil" or constitutes a
lack or respect for ethics for someone to use non-copyrightable facts as
though they are not copyrighted.

Now, with that out of the way, let's say a big huge company with lots of map
data and a decent-sized legal budget decides to use OSM data as though it
were not copyrighted.  Presumably they'd try to do this without getting
caught, but let's further say that they do get caught.  Now what?  Now we
sue them and they have to argue in court that geodata is ineligible for
copyright?  Yeah right.  That means their competitors can now come along and
take all of *their* data, and there's nothing at all that they can do about
it.

Seems incredibly unlikely to me.
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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Anthony]

On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 2:39 AM, Frederik Ramm  wrote:

> For a long time we assumed that the current license did indeed work, and we
> essentially told everyone who signed up that their data was protected.
>

And what does it mean for the data to be "protected"?

It doesn't mean that people who *use* the data have to (offer to) release
their database.  It means they can't take the data, add new data, and
copyright that new data.

But if the data isn't copyrightable, neither the old data *nor* the new data
will be copyrighted.
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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 17 July 2010 18:34, Heiko Jacobs  wrote:
> I saw anywhere in the deeps of discussion at legal, that also
> the new licence does not protect data in australia ...? Mmmmh ...

No, someone was claiming cc-by licenses we're valid in Australia, as a
reason to change to ODBL, if that is the case why did both the federal
and state governments of Australia release data under cc-by if it was
so weak.

In theory we have more problems with the new terms and conditions than
ODBL, ODBL seems cc-by compatible, but the terms and conditions allow
other "free and open licenses" which isn't cc-by compatible. All that
is needed to fix this is add a stipulation for the "free and open
license" to be attribution based and the problem, for us, disappears.

The alternative isn't pretty, potentially up to 1/3rd of the data
might disappear, so we are some what concerned at this point.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[80n]

On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 7:39 AM, Frederik Ramm  wrote:

> Hi,
>
>
> John Smith wrote:
>
>> On 17 July 2010 13:07, Michael Barabanov 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Consider two cases:
>>>
>>> 1. Current license does not cover the OSM data (I think that's the OSMF
>>> view).  In this  case, OSMF can just change to ODBL without asking
>>> anyone.
>>> 2. Current license does cover the OSM data. Then there's no need to
>>> change.
>>>
>>> Where's the issue?
>>>
>>
>> I made that exact point above some time ago and people umm'd and arr'd
>> and didn't give me a straight answer...
>>
>
> The answer is quite simply actually.
>
> For a long time we assumed that the current license did indeed work, and we
> essentially told everyone who signed up that their data was protected. They
> trusted us and assumed we had chosen the license well.
>
> We now know that anybody, at least in most jurisdictions and if he has a
> decent-sized legal budget and has not respect for ethics (i.e. is
> sufficiently evil), can effectively use our data as if it were unprotected.


Do you have some relevant evidence to back this assertion?  I'm not aware of
any case law that is close enough to our situation to have much weight.  I
know about telephone directories and TV listings, but the crux here is the
extent to which the content of the OSM dataset is creative and thus
copyrightable.  Is there any case-law on this that is relevant?


> In other words, we were wrong, we chose the wrong license out of ignorance.
> Shit happens.
>

Yeah, shit happens, OSM becomes outrageously successful and nobody abuses
the spirit of the license.  What kind of shit is that?


>

This does not mean that *we* should throw our sense of what's right and
> what's wrong over board and become evil. Taking the data now and relicensing
> it without asking those whom we have, for years, assured that their data was
> safe under the license we chose for them would amount to betraying these
> people, and would not form the basis of trust we need to continue to build a
> good community.
>
> It is beyond me how anyone can even suggest that we effectively pirate our
> own data and use this as a basis for a healthy project.
>
> No "umm" and "arr" from my side - just plain disbelief at such a rotten
> idea.
>
> Bye
> Frederik
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Heiko Jacobs]

Michael Barabanov schrieb:
> Consider two cases:
>
> 1. Current license does not cover the OSM data (I think that's the OSMF
> view).  In this  case, OSMF can just change to ODBL without asking anyone.
> 2. Current license does cover the OSM data. Then there's no need to change.
>
> Where's the issue?

You mean "where is the problem in this two cases?"?

Frederik Ramm schrieb:
> In other words, we were wrong, we chose the wrong license
> out of ignorance. Shit happens.

So subtract the shit,
but without adding new shit by subtracting any data ...

> This does not mean that *we* should throw our sense of what's right and
> what's wrong over board and become evil. Taking the data now and
> relicensing it without asking those whom we have, for years, assured
> that their data was safe

With the changing process proposed my data isn't safe if it is
partially based on work of mapper who said no or who is away.
And whole data I want to use in other areas is also not safe anymore

> under the license we chose for them would
> amount to betraying these people, and would not form the basis of trust
> we need to continue to build a good community.

The process proposed is also not a base of trust if data of mappers,
who said yes, is lost.

Michael Barabanov schrieb:
Thanks for the explanation.  BTW, I think "pirate" is quite an 
overstatement in this context. The proposed license is still a free/open 
license.  Plus I kind of suspect that most contributors care about 
potential data loss more than CC license vs ODBL license,


+1

but I may be wrong. 


-1 ;-)

Still, let me advance the "rotten" line of thought a bit. Not 
that I'm advocating for anything.


1. OSMF does change the license without any regard; people who are 
against ODBL get pissed off and stop contributing (lost for OSM?). No 
data loss from the database.


2. OSMF does not do that; contributions of people who are against ODBL 
are deleted, people who are against ODBL stop contributing anyway.  
Potential data loss.


Not only potential data loss: data loss *guaranteed* for mappers,
which cannot be reached (and mappers said no to change of licence).

>  We've no idea how big,


there're technical issues for identifying the data to be removed


There are no solution possible.
Think about history function in case of splitted or joined ways.
And what about a way, mapped by A with 3 points and highway=path
and B sets a fourth point in the middle and add surface=... smoothness=...
Who is the true holder of copyright of the way and first three points?
And so on ...

3. Of course, there's a third possibility where everyone just loves ODBL 
and so it's a win-win. Wouldn't that be nice.


Then there is still the problem of the mappers we could not contact...

4. Because of data loss we stay with CC.

I saw anywhere in the deeps of discussion at legal, that also
the new licence does not protect data in australia ...? Mmmmh ...

Mueck


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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Michael Barabanov wrote:
1. OSMF does change the license without any regard; people who are 
against ODBL get pissed off and stop contributing (lost for OSM?). No 
data loss from the database.


2. OSMF does not do that; contributions of people who are against ODBL 
are deleted, people who are against ODBL stop contributing anyway.  
Potential data loss.


This is true but I am pretty convinced that (1) would lead to people 
saying: "Ah, OpenStreetMap, those guys that re-licence their stuff at 
will." - We would be thrown in with people like CDDB.


I think that there are people who are against ODbL but will continue 
contributing if they see that this is what most project members want. I 
think that this number will be much smaller if OSM is seen to ignore 
their contributors' will. But this is only my impression; maybe one 
should start a poll asking: "Would you find it morally acceptable to 
simply change the license without giving a damn for what contributors say?"


Bye
Frederik

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Michael Barabanov]

Thanks for the explanation.  BTW, I think "pirate" is quite an overstatement
in this context. The proposed license is still a free/open license.  Plus I
kind of suspect that most contributors care about potential data loss more
than CC license vs ODBL license, but I may be wrong.  Still, let me advance
the "rotten" line of thought a bit. Not that I'm advocating for anything.

1. OSMF does change the license without any regard; people who are against
ODBL get pissed off and stop contributing (lost for OSM?). No data loss from
the database.
2. OSMF does not do that; contributions of people who are against ODBL are
deleted, people who are against ODBL stop contributing anyway.  Potential
data loss.  We've no idea how big, there're technical issues for identifying
the data to be removed and actually implementing removal, and there seems to
be an overall sense of uncertainty until the whole thing is resolved.
3. Of course, there's a third possibility where everyone just loves ODBL and
so it's a win-win. Wouldn't that be nice.

On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 11:39 PM, Frederik Ramm  wrote:

> Hi,
>
>
> John Smith wrote:
>
>> On 17 July 2010 13:07, Michael Barabanov 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Consider two cases:
>>>
>>> 1. Current license does not cover the OSM data (I think that's the OSMF
>>> view).  In this  case, OSMF can just change to ODBL without asking
>>> anyone.
>>> 2. Current license does cover the OSM data. Then there's no need to
>>> change.
>>>
>>> Where's the issue?
>>>
>>
>> I made that exact point above some time ago and people umm'd and arr'd
>> and didn't give me a straight answer...
>>
>
> The answer is quite simply actually.
>
> For a long time we assumed that the current license did indeed work, and we
> essentially told everyone who signed up that their data was protected. They
> trusted us and assumed we had chosen the license well.
>
> We now know that anybody, at least in most jurisdictions and if he has a
> decent-sized legal budget and has not respect for ethics (i.e. is
> sufficiently evil), can effectively use our data as if it were unprotected.
> In other words, we were wrong, we chose the wrong license out of ignorance.
> Shit happens.
>
> This does not mean that *we* should throw our sense of what's right and
> what's wrong over board and become evil. Taking the data now and relicensing
> it without asking those whom we have, for years, assured that their data was
> safe under the license we chose for them would amount to betraying these
> people, and would not form the basis of trust we need to continue to build a
> good community.
>
> It is beyond me how anyone can even suggest that we effectively pirate our
> own data and use this as a basis for a healthy project.
>
> No "umm" and "arr" from my side - just plain disbelief at such a rotten
> idea.
>
> Bye
> Frederik
>
> --
> Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frede...@remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

John Smith wrote:

On 17 July 2010 13:07, Michael Barabanov  wrote:

Consider two cases:

1. Current license does not cover the OSM data (I think that's the OSMF
view).  In this  case, OSMF can just change to ODBL without asking anyone.
2. Current license does cover the OSM data. Then there's no need to change.

Where's the issue?


I made that exact point above some time ago and people umm'd and arr'd
and didn't give me a straight answer...


The answer is quite simply actually.

For a long time we assumed that the current license did indeed work, and 
we essentially told everyone who signed up that their data was 
protected. They trusted us and assumed we had chosen the license well.


We now know that anybody, at least in most jurisdictions and if he has a 
decent-sized legal budget and has not respect for ethics (i.e. is 
sufficiently evil), can effectively use our data as if it were 
unprotected. In other words, we were wrong, we chose the wrong license 
out of ignorance. Shit happens.


This does not mean that *we* should throw our sense of what's right and 
what's wrong over board and become evil. Taking the data now and 
relicensing it without asking those whom we have, for years, assured 
that their data was safe under the license we chose for them would 
amount to betraying these people, and would not form the basis of trust 
we need to continue to build a good community.


It is beyond me how anyone can even suggest that we effectively pirate 
our own data and use this as a basis for a healthy project.


No "umm" and "arr" from my side - just plain disbelief at such a rotten 
idea.


Bye
Frederik

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[John Smith]

On 17 July 2010 13:07, Michael Barabanov  wrote:
> Consider two cases:
>
> 1. Current license does not cover the OSM data (I think that's the OSMF
> view).  In this  case, OSMF can just change to ODBL without asking anyone.
> 2. Current license does cover the OSM data. Then there's no need to change.
>
> Where's the issue?

I made that exact point above some time ago and people umm'd and arr'd
and didn't give me a straight answer...

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Michael Barabanov]

Consider two cases:

1. Current license does not cover the OSM data (I think that's the OSMF
view).  In this  case, OSMF can just change to ODBL without asking anyone.
2. Current license does cover the OSM data. Then there's no need to change.

Where's the issue?

On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 5:55 PM, Nathan Edgars II wrote:

>
>
> Heiko Jacobs-2 wrote:
> >
> > But I don't will accept any data loss because only of legal reasons.
> > Wikipedia and other projects changed licence without any loss of data.
> >
> Unfortunately Wikipedia took advantage of a loophole: contributors agreed
> to
> the current GFDL or any later version, and they convinced the people in
> charge of the GFDL to have the next version allow the license change.
> --
> View this message in context:
> http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/What-could-we-do-to-make-this-licences-discussion-more-inclusive-tp5292284p5304613.html
> Sent from the General Discussion mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Nathan Edgars II]

Heiko Jacobs-2 wrote:
> 
> But I don't will accept any data loss because only of legal reasons.
> Wikipedia and other projects changed licence without any loss of data.
> 
Unfortunately Wikipedia took advantage of a loophole: contributors agreed to
the current GFDL or any later version, and they convinced the people in
charge of the GFDL to have the next version allow the license change.
-- 
View this message in context: 
http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/What-could-we-do-to-make-this-licences-discussion-more-inclusive-tp5292284p5304613.html
Sent from the General Discussion mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Heiko Jacobs]

Roland Olbricht schrieb:
- There is no tool yet to see the impact of the relicensing to the data. But 
this is the key need for those who are rather interested in the data than the 
legalese.


I would say that the new licence might be good, beter than the old one
BUT:
I also interested MUCH MORE in the data than the legalese.

The last days I read a lot on the process proposed on changing the
licence, especially about the technical way of deciding which node/way
might be ok, which not, if anyone of the mappers decided to say no.
I saw that there will never be a solution that can work.
E.g. the history is incomplete if ways are splitted or joined, so you
cannot see all data affected of such mappers. Also you cannot decide,
which copyright is more valuable if to persons did something.
There were a lot of examples etc. in german forum and talk-de mailing list
from me and others, but my english is not goog enough to repeat them all.
The process will never work,
so stop this process and find another solution!
The solution now ALWAYS leads to data loss, more or less.
But I don't will accept any data loss because only of legal reasons.
Wikipedia and other projects changed licence without any loss of data.

The process now gives me only one vote: a combination of new
Contributor Terms, new licence for the whole project and new licence
for my own data. Although the new licence is good: I have to say no
because of the data loss, which ALWAYS will appear with changing licence.
Much more arguments on talk-de

But don't forget that one of the key features of the 
project is the message: "Care for the data and the applications - we promise 
you won't be affected by legal trouble". Thus, I would consider the license as 
a technical detail, like the change from API v0.5 to API v0.6.


+1

Legal 
things are less logical than technical things, thus everybody would accept 
more collateral damage.


No, why? Wikipedia has lost 0 bytes

Then, the algorithm "unbroken chain of history of ODbL users" is close to 
nonsense.


+1024!

Mueck


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Re: [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?

[Roland Olbricht]

> I've split this from the original thread before it derails the one it
> was in any further, and cc'd legal-talk.
[...]
> What could we (you/me/LWG) do to make this more inclusive?

Just some bullet points at first, explanation follows:
- There is no tool yet to see the impact of the relicensing to the data. But 
this is the key need for those who are rather interested in the data than the 
legalese. Please develop the tool first or leave sufficient time to let 
develop such a tool.
- Please present a sound and complete technical solution to disentangle the 
data between the relicensed and the not relicensed.
- Be prepared on a successive per-region move to the license. The communities 
in different parts of the world are at different pace.

I don't think that the mappers in general are annoyed about that somebody 
works on legal issues. But don't forget that one of the key features of the 
project is the message: "Care for the data and the applications - we promise 
you won't be affected by legal trouble". Thus, I would consider the license as 
a technical detail, like the change from API v0.5 to API v0.6.

Now, if the API change would have damaged an unknown amount of data at unknown 
places, if would have been never done. This is because those responsible for 
the API change were aware that the new API is a mean, not and end. Legal 
things are less logical than technical things, thus everybody would accept 
more collateral damage. But still, I would expect good faith from the LWG: it 
is technical feasible to preview the impact of the license change on the data 
with an appropriate tool. Some suggestions

- Have another read-only mirror that contains only the already relicensed 
data. This would allow to render a map with the ODbL-avaiable. Thus, the data 
loss or not-loss gets easily visible. We only need another server and a list 
of all user-ids that have so far relicensed, and about 4 weeks to make 
everything working.

- Don't use an extra server, but make the relicensing data available via the 
main API. This needs much more brainpower, would save a server and prevents 
the user-id list from being published. I would estimate this takes at least 8 
weeks to develop.

I would volunteer to do option 1 if I get time until the end of the year. 
Maybe somebody else could offer this faster.

Then, the algorithm "unbroken chain of history of ODbL users" is close to 
nonsense. An easy exploit would be a bot, possible camouflaged by different 
user accounts, that systematically deletes and re-inserts every object. Then, 
all data would have "unbroken chain of history" but won't have in general. 
Note that massive delete and re-create takes place from time to time, e.g. 
when imports and synced with pre-existing data. I claim more time to first get 
a more elaborate algorithm for the data move decision, so please remove the 
fixed timings from the plan.

And, of course, things like translating messages into foreign languages and 
back, explaining the licensing issues at all to mappers in foreign systems of 
legislation and so on takes time. Indeed much more time than to implement a 
license within the special legal system it was designed for. I don't find the 
issues addressed in the implementation plan at all.

Cheers,

Roland

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