Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
2009/3/17 Robert (Jamie) Munro rjmu...@arjam.net: Ps. Reaching 100,000 users is extremely bad news for the license. I think we should stop taking new users unless they agree to make their contribs licensed under whatever future license the foundation thinks is appropriate. Or you could use wording like licensed to the foundation under a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual license for all purposes in all media - Right now, every new user that contributes is a new problem for the relicensing. well, every old user is a potential problem for the relicensing as well. Why should we exclude new contributors or ask them to agree to whatever future license that we can't even name ourselves? I would prefer not to read about users (=contributors) as problems. Martin ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-t...@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
On Mar 16, 2009, at 6:47 PM, Gervase Markham wrote: On 16/03/09 00:26, Russ Nelson wrote: 1) Because ODbL 1.0 is better than C-By-SA Taking ODbL 0.9 instead of 1.0, I think that's at least debatable, Of course. I'm saying that when we adopt ODbL when it's published, we'll do so because it's better than CC-By-SA. And if it isn't, then we'll go looking elsewhere. I'm not saying that ODbL is, a priori, better than CC-By-SA. But I *am* saying that we should adopt a license which is better than CC-By-SA even if the license we adopt is not perfect. CC-by-SA may have loads of potential issues, They're only potential issues until the shit hits the fan. Then the recriminations about Why didn't you switch to a different license if you knew the problems were so bad start. 2) Because it's not clear that we'll understand ODbL any time soon well enough to fix any problems. So the sales pitch to people concerned is yeah, the new licence has known problems and we don't understand it properly so it has unknown ones too. But it'll all probably get fixed eventually? No, it's yeah, the new license is better than the old one. The best is the enemy of the good. Just because we can conceive of a perfect license doesn't mean we can write one. -- Russ Nelson - http://community.cloudmade.com/blog - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:RussNelson r...@cloudmade.com - Twitter: Russ_OSM - http://openstreetmap.org/user/RussNelson ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-t...@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
Since my name is mentioned twice, it might be good to give some light to statement of the open issues. Frederik Ramm schreef: Anyone suggesting to use ODbL 0.9 un-altered would be out of their mind and thus I assume that nobody does. I have no official OSMF statement on this in English, but Henk Hoff said on talk-de that OSMF expects the current known issues to be ironed out in 1.0, and the phrase fix problems in 1.1 only applies to such problems that are not known yet. During the Telephone Debate the question was raised whether it would be good to bring the 1.0 license up for a vote if we still have serveral important open issues that are unanswered. General feeling within the call (at least that's how I felt it was) was that the open issues as mentioned in http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Open_Issues needs to be answered before we put the 1.0 license up for a vote. This does not necessarily mean that all issues needs to be *resolved* in the 1.0 version. Besides: some of the open issues are mere general, like Who is the licensor? Cheers, Henk H. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-t...@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
Henk Hoff schrieb: Besides: some of the open issues are mere general, like Who is the licensor? The answer to that question has quite far-reaching consequences on what the license means in practice. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-t...@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 10:59 AM, Russ Nelson r...@cloudmade.com wrote: On Mar 16, 2009, at 4:49 AM, 80n wrote: On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 1:16 AM, Russ Nelson r...@cloudmade.com wrote: We didn't understand the negative aspects of the CC-By-SA, but we used *it*. Are you saying that OSM shouldn't have been licensed at all, because at the time the licensing decision was made, people didn't understand exactly how it would work? Are arguing that we should then make the same mistake twice? No, I'm saying that sober people looked at the license and given their current understanding, thought it was the best choice. Other sober people have also looked at the proposed licenses and have identified a lot of questions and uncertainty. I'm suspicious of anyone who at this point thinks the new license is good enough. The open issues list contains a number of significant problems. Are you (and the other sober people you refer to) endorsing the license despite these issues? Or is your endorsement qualified by the assumption that these issues will have been addressed? Either position seems foolish to me. We shouldn't let the fact that we'll be smarter in the future delay us from making the best decision now, just as they didn't let the fact that we're smarter now from making that decision then. There seems to be a lot of emotion here, but if cost(CC-By-SA) cost(ODbL) + cost(switching), then we should switch even if we know that in the future we'll be evaluating cost(ODbL 1.0) against cost(ODbL 1.1) + cost(switching). This should be obvious, no? So why do we need to have a discussion about it? ODbL is more complex than CC-BY-SA in many way (copyright *and* database rights *and* contract law) and it is completely untested. EVERY open source contract is a unilateral contract (contract of adhesion) which relies on copyright law for its teeth. So, the ODbL introduces database rights ... but only because we've already seen that CC-By-SA doesn't work.. YES, there are risks, but YES there are risks of the status quo. The trouble here is that people are not very good at evaluating the risk of an unlikely event with bad consequences. Expect irrationality. So you are happy with these risks. That is your choice. Others may not be happy with these risks. The way to help people evaluate the risks is to explain them. 80n ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
Gervase Markham wrote: Taking ODbL 0.9 instead of 1.0, I think that's at least debatable, given the issues raised by the ITO lawyer and others. But happily no-one is proposing that we move to 0.9. So let's put some effort into getting 1.0 as good as it can be. To date the only Difficult Question anyone has raised about ODbL is compatibility of Produced Works with existing share-alike licences, and even there several plausible solutions have been advanced. fakerichardf WOW! You guys are so negative! Stop being so negative! Sorry... Be More Positive!!1! /fakerichardf cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Karl-Popper-Debate-tp22468759p22549353.html Sent from the OpenStreetMap - Legal Talk mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
Hi, Gervase Markham wrote: 1) Because ODbL 1.0 is better than C-By-SA Taking ODbL 0.9 instead of 1.0, I think that's at least debatable, given the issues raised by the ITO lawyer and others. No reason for these cautious words. ODbL 0.9 is absolutely unworkable because, for example, it does not make sure that interim derivative databases are made available (a key element of the sales pitch we've been driving to the community), and it makes it impossible to release a Produced Work under CC-BY-SA (and so impossible to combine OSM data with CC-BY-SA licensed data into a Produced Work). Anyone suggesting to use ODbL 0.9 un-altered would be out of their mind and thus I assume that nobody does. I have no official OSMF statement on this in English, but Henk Hoff said on talk-de that OSMF expects the current known issues to be ironed out in 1.0, and the phrase fix problems in 1.1 only applies to such problems that are not known yet. So the sales pitch to people concerned is yeah, the new licence has known problems and we don't understand it properly so it has unknown ones too. But it'll all probably get fixed eventually? To be honest to people, this would also have to include: And by the way once 1.0 is accepted OSMF has absolutely no influence on how quickly license updates are produced. Rufus Pollock has written over on odc-discuss that he doesn't expect a new version of the license to be quick: I'd also point out that it will be possible upgrade the license (a v2.0 if you like) though that is not likely to happen that quickly after a v1.0 release. He/ODC/OKNF have also, but I cannot find this to insert a proper quote at the moment, repeatedly asked for someone from OSM/OSMF to be present on their advisory board to help with interpretation and continuous development of the license. To my understanding OSMF has not yet nominated anyone for this job. Any volunteers? Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 1:16 AM, Russ Nelson r...@cloudmade.com wrote: On Mar 15, 2009, at 8:33 PM, Simon Ward wrote: On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 08:26:14PM -0400, Russ Nelson wrote: On Mar 15, 2009, at 6:00 PM, Gervase Markham wrote: why are we bothering with switching OSM to 1.0 at all? Why not just wait for the 1.1 fixed version? 1) Because ODbL 1.0 is better than C-By-SA So far that is one thing that is subject to debate. You're changing the subject. Gerv was wondering why we would switch to a license we know isn't perfect. The answer is : because it's better. OBVIOUSLY if it's not better, we wouldn't switch to it. 2) Because it's not clear that we'll understand ODbL any time soon well enough to fix any problems. If we don’t understand it we shouldn’t use it. We didn't understand the negative aspects of the CC-By-SA, but we used *it*. Are you saying that OSM shouldn't have been licensed at all, because at the time the licensing decision was made, people didn't understand exactly how it would work? Are arguing that we should then make the same mistake twice? ODbL is more complex than CC-BY-SA in many way (copyright *and* database rights *and* contract law) and it is completely untested. Can you explain why you think the risks justify your haste? 80n ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-t...@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Gervase Markham wrote: On 14/03/09 20:32, Ulf Möller wrote: OSFM is trying to get ODbL 1.0 in place as soon as possible and fix problems in version 1.1 later on. The difficulty with doing that is that people who are approached about relicensing their data might say no, because the licence is broken in ways X, Y and Z which were highlighted by the discussion process. Even if the reply is we hope to fix those in 1.1, they might say well, come back then, then. So what happens then? Do we remove their data or don't we? It depends on how the license is broken. If it doesn't allow people to do things that we think they should be able to, then that's no worse that the situation now. If it allows people to steal the data in some sense, then yes, people would say no. Bear in mind that the new licence won't take away any rights we have under CC-BY-SA. The data will (AFAIK) continue as dual licensed in future. The worst case scenario is that people get to use the data for more purposes than we intend to allow. These people will stop being able to update their database when version 1.1 of the license comes out. Robert (Jamie) Munro -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.8 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkm+mKoACgkQz+aYVHdncI2aEgCgqDNEe9Ll3Ug+AamU98EXoN1q Lg8AnRHOU4JYHhBITvtfyK2HbExyA1NW =+8so -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-t...@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
Hi, Robert (Jamie) Munro wrote: Bear in mind that the new licence won't take away any rights we have under CC-BY-SA. The data will (AFAIK) continue as dual licensed in future. First time I heard this. Of course the *old* planet files will remain CC-BY-SA and relicensing will only apply to the OSM trunk if you will but I never heard anyone suggest that we'd be CC-BY-SA as well as ODbL in the future. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-t...@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
On 14/03/09 20:32, Ulf Möller wrote: OSFM is trying to get ODbL 1.0 in place as soon as possible and fix problems in version 1.1 later on. The difficulty with doing that is that people who are approached about relicensing their data might say no, because the licence is broken in ways X, Y and Z which were highlighted by the discussion process. Even if the reply is we hope to fix those in 1.1, they might say well, come back then, then. So what happens then? Do we remove their data or don't we? If we do, then that's data that was lost which wouldn't have been lost if we got the licence right first time. If we don't, then why are we bothering with switching OSM to 1.0 at all? Why not just wait for the 1.1 fixed version? Gerv ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
Hi, Gervase Markham wrote: OSFM is trying to get ODbL 1.0 in place as soon as possible and fix problems in version 1.1 later on. The difficulty with doing that is that people who are approached about relicensing their data might say no, because the licence is broken in ways X, Y and Z which were highlighted by the discussion process. Even if the reply is we hope to fix those in 1.1, they might say well, come back then, then. So what happens then? Do we remove their data or don't we? It would be extremely stupid to go ahead with a license that has known bugs. (There will be enough not-yet-known bugs to fix in 1.1.) - I wasn't on the phone call but Henk Hoff said in a followup on talk-de that it is OSMF's intention to fix the *known* bugs before going live with 1.0. How this fits together with the idea that the schedule need not be modified is anyone's guess. I am concerned about the review by the ITO lawyer; some of the issues raised seem to me of a magnitude that means the license cannot be simply fixed to accommodate them - we have a choice to ignore these issues and plough ahead nonetheless (after all: three lawyers, four opinions), or if we take them seriously we'd have to do a major rewrite that could not be considered a later version of ODbL anymore. I'm eager to hear Jordan Hatcher's response but at the same time, realistically, I lack the legal expertise to decide who has the more convincing argument. If it is difficult for me to make an informed decision, then how can Joe Mapper who hasn't even followed the discussion? Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
On Mar 15, 2009, at 6:00 PM, Gervase Markham wrote: why are we bothering with switching OSM to 1.0 at all? Why not just wait for the 1.1 fixed version? 1) Because ODbL 1.0 is better than C-By-SA 2) Because it's not clear that we'll understand ODbL any time soon well enough to fix any problems. -- Russ Nelson - http://community.cloudmade.com/blog - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:RussNelson r...@cloudmade.com - Twitter: Russ_OSM - http://openstreetmap.org/user/RussNelson ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 08:26:14PM -0400, Russ Nelson wrote: On Mar 15, 2009, at 6:00 PM, Gervase Markham wrote: why are we bothering with switching OSM to 1.0 at all? Why not just wait for the 1.1 fixed version? 1) Because ODbL 1.0 is better than C-By-SA So far that is one thing that is subject to debate. Unless the produced works and derivative databases thing is sorted, if it’s better than CC-by-sa, it’s not by much, and certainly not enough to warrant the licence change. 2) Because it's not clear that we'll understand ODbL any time soon well enough to fix any problems. If we don’t understand it we shouldn’t use it. Simon -- A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.—John Gall signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
On Mar 15, 2009, at 8:33 PM, Simon Ward wrote: On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 08:26:14PM -0400, Russ Nelson wrote: On Mar 15, 2009, at 6:00 PM, Gervase Markham wrote: why are we bothering with switching OSM to 1.0 at all? Why not just wait for the 1.1 fixed version? 1) Because ODbL 1.0 is better than C-By-SA So far that is one thing that is subject to debate. You're changing the subject. Gerv was wondering why we would switch to a license we know isn't perfect. The answer is : because it's better. OBVIOUSLY if it's not better, we wouldn't switch to it. 2) Because it's not clear that we'll understand ODbL any time soon well enough to fix any problems. If we don’t understand it we shouldn’t use it. We didn't understand the negative aspects of the CC-By-SA, but we used *it*. Are you saying that OSM shouldn't have been licensed at all, because at the time the licensing decision was made, people didn't understand exactly how it would work? -- Russ Nelson - http://community.cloudmade.com/blog - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:RussNelson r...@cloudmade.com - Twitter: Russ_OSM - http://openstreetmap.org/user/RussNelson ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
Here's a short summary: OSMF was represented by Nick Black and Michael Collinson with Grant Slater and Henk Hoff joining in later on. There were 150 participants on IRC, and about 20 on the conf call, with about 10 of them speaking. Three main aspects were: * Discussion on the license and implementation plan mainly between Peter Miller (ITO) and OSMF * Discussion on how the process so far is seen by the German community in particular * Factual questions on the ODbL Some important points: OSFM is trying to get ODbL 1.0 in place as soon as possible and fix problems in version 1.1 later on. They would have hoped for more input from the community regarding the terms that users have to sign up to to upload data. (?) The Use Cases were given to OSMF's legal counsil, the response is exptected next week. The Working Group didn't have time to look into the Open Issues so far. Grant will take care of that now. Even though that means that a number of fundamental questions remain unanswered, no reason is seen to change the timeline. However, the time between the publication of the license and the vote will be increased from 3 to 10 days so as to allow legal review of the license. OSMF will try to communicate the purpose of the license change better with emphasis on the ShareAlike issue. They will try to address the German, Italian, etc communities better. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
On Mar 14, 2009, at 4:32 PM, Ulf Möller wrote: However, the time between the publication of the license and the vote will be increased from 3 to 10 days so as to allow legal review of the license. Thanks for this summary, Ulf. I have generally been staying out of this conversation because I think the license change is necessary, and that the OSMF is trustworthy and is doing a good job. But it also needs to be SEEN as doing a good job, and lengthening the time period is a good idea toward that end. I believe that there will be problems in the 1.0 license, but we won't be able to know them immediately (just like the GPL wasn't well understood for about the first five years of its existence -- go read gnu-misc-discuss archives if you don't believe me). As long as the new license is enough better than the old to justify the effort needed to switch, it's worth switching. OSMF will try to communicate the purpose of the license change better with emphasis on the ShareAlike issue. They will try to address the German, Italian, etc communities better. No. Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try. -- Russ Nelson - http://community.cloudmade.com/blog - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:RussNelson r...@cloudmade.com - Twitter: Russ_OSM - http://openstreetmap.org/user/RussNelson ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-t...@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
Hi, Nick Black wrote: I've always felt that you were completely aligned behind the aims of OSM - we can disagree, but at the end of the day we're all here for the same reason. Right now, its really hard to find anything positive or constructive in your ongoing bombardment of these lists. The same people that now want to have a telephone conference have been completely absent from the community decision making process during the last months. I don't know what they were working on but they surely were not working with the community. I simply cannot fathom why they would suddenly - without having made any attempt to connect with the community that was analysing the license draft, finding the problems, hammmering out possible solutions - want to have a telephone conference to help us connect better. I'm happy to help but that would require that I first understand the problem. What exactly does the telephone conference want to achieve? The issues are on the table, the license working group has so far declined to comment or take part in the process of identifying the issues and finding possible fixes. Who exactly needs to connect better with whom, and how will the telephone conference help? Is it just going to be a nice chat where we all get a warm fuzzy feeling by hearing each other's voice, or is it planned to later use the telephone conference as any kind of guidance for the process? The more complicated issues that we have found, for example the fine details about the reverse-engineering clause clashing with share-alike licenses, are very unlikely to be tabled and understood by all in a two-hour international call with many non-native speakers; a telephone conference will have a natural bias towards easy subjects. This does not mean that the complicated issues are any less important, and I fear that people might use the telephone call as an excuse to brush away the complex bits (ah, but nobody seemed to be interested in that during the telephone conference...). Insofar as the telephone conference is just meant to augment what we already have achieved - to bring in additional people who are more comfortable with the spoken rather than the written word, and generally get a different kind of brainstorming going - I'm all in favour of it. But the very second that someone starts to suggest that the telephone conference in some way has the potential to overrule the existing work (it did not seem important enough for people to raise this in the telco, so...) then whole thing becomes an unfair attempt at discarding what I and others have been working for, by implementing a process known in advance to be biased (towards simple issues and native speakers). The fact that I care for OSM is why I am involved, not only as a mapper, but also here, on legal-talk. Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
Liz wrote: Sent: 12 March 2009 10:31 AM To: Licensing and other legal discussions. Subject: Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate On Thu, 12 Mar 2009, Frederik Ramm wrote: Nick Black wrote: I've always felt that you were completely aligned behind the aims of OSM - we can disagree, but at the end of the day we're all here for the same reason. Right now, its really hard to find anything positive or constructive in your ongoing bombardment of these lists. The same people that now want to have a telephone conference have been completely absent from the community decision making process during the last months. I don't know what they were working on but they surely were not working with the community. I simply cannot fathom why they would suddenly - without having made any attempt to connect with the community that was analysing the license draft, finding the problems, hammmering out possible solutions - want to have a telephone conference to help us connect better. I don't find a telephone conference acceptable. While Frederick mentions the troubles of language, I don't want to be on the phone at 0200 local time. I'd rather be asleep, and my critical faculties probably would be asleep at that time even if I was nominally on the telephone. Liz Perhaps for those whose time zones don't fit with the proposed discussion can put their usernames on the licence discussion wiki page. Then the working group can decide if any further sessions are needed. Cheers Andy ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
For Pity's sake Fred, give it a rest! cheers, Chris - Original Message From: Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org To: Licensing and other legal discussions. legal-talk@openstreetmap.org Sent: Thursday, 12 March, 2009 8:32:19 Subject: Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate Hi, SteveC wrote: In the past couple of license working group meetings we've been trying to figure out how to get more input from the community on everything without descending in to a free-for-all. Does that mean that what we've so far collected on the Wiki (and the lists, and the co-ment site) is considered as having descended into a free-for-all and thus by implication somehow worthless? (Still struggling to see the negative in free-for-all but you seem to be convinced that the license must not be discussed by all.) You say that issues should be raised on IRC; does that mean that you only want to discuss *additional* issues that are not yet on the Wiki, or are you basically requesting that people copy+paste the Wiki pages into IRC if they want to affirm the importance of these issues? Or is this more of a psychological exercise where Joe Mapper is allowed to speak his mind and be heard to make him happy (in which case it would be ok for 10 people in a row to say the same thing). Has it occurred to the license working group that such a phone call will naturally be dominated by native speakers of English? Is the signal you are wanting to send something like we're looking to implement a license for the UK and the US only, and the rest may do what they please? Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
On 12 Mar 2009, at 10:36, Andy Robinson (blackadder-lists) wrote: Liz wrote: Sent: 12 March 2009 10:31 AM To: Licensing and other legal discussions. Subject: Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate On Thu, 12 Mar 2009, Frederik Ramm wrote: Nick Black wrote: I've always felt that you were completely aligned behind the aims of OSM - we can disagree, but at the end of the day we're all here for the same reason. Right now, its really hard to find anything positive or constructive in your ongoing bombardment of these lists. The same people that now want to have a telephone conference have been completely absent from the community decision making process during the last months. I don't know what they were working on but they surely were not working with the community. I simply cannot fathom why they would suddenly - without having made any attempt to connect with the community that was analysing the license draft, finding the problems, hammmering out possible solutions - want to have a telephone conference to help us connect better. I don't find a telephone conference acceptable. While Frederick mentions the troubles of language, I don't want to be on the phone at 0200 local time. I'd rather be asleep, and my critical faculties probably would be asleep at that time even if I was nominally on the telephone. Liz Perhaps for those whose time zones don't fit with the proposed discussion can put their usernames on the licence discussion wiki page. Then the working group can decide if any further sessions are needed. Umm.. there are two parallel processes running here, the community is involved in one and the working group is involved in another. At no point has the working group engaged with the community and asked what might be helpful at this point. I am sure you guys are doing good work but imho the approach around the call is not helpful. Fyi, I am unlikely to take part in the call for the following reasons: 1) I would prefer to be doing something else in the middle of the day at the weekend 2) I don't think it is necessary and probably won't achieve anything that can't be achieved better by proper engagement by the working group with the list/wiki 3) I think it provides a bias towards people who speak English as a first langauge... unless of course the language to be used is German ;) 4) I don't like the way the idea was introduced by the working group To help the process I have provided a signup section on the working group meetings wiki page for people to indicate that they will be taking part http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Licensing_Working_Group_Meetings Regards, Peter Miller Cheers Andy ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 09:30:33PM +1100, Liz wrote: I don't find a telephone conference acceptable. While Frederick mentions the troubles of language, I don't want to be on the phone at 0200 local time. I'd rather be asleep, and my critical faculties probably would be asleep at that time even if I was nominally on the telephone. Mailing lists are much more international friendly methods of communication. What is it you (SteveC, Nick, etc) excpect to get out of the telephone conference that can’t be facilitated on the list? Simon -- A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.—John Gall signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
Frederik Ramm wrote: Hi, SteveC wrote: In the past couple of license working group meetings we've been trying to figure out how to get more input from the community on everything without descending in to a free-for-all. Does that mean that what we've so far collected on the Wiki (and the lists, and the co-ment site) is considered as having descended into a free-for-all and thus by implication somehow worthless? (Still struggling to see the negative in free-for-all but you seem to be convinced that the license must not be discussed by all.) My views, not the Licensing Working Group (LWG) The issues from the Wiki have recently been sent to the licensing legal council, LWG haven't yet had an answer. I am not a lawyer and even as a member of the licensing working group I am unsuitable to answer most (all?) of the _legal_ questions. OSM process discussion I can handle... Item from the minutes: http://foundation.openstreetmap.org/licensing-working-group-minutes-2009-03-06/ * Open community call + IRC sessions in order to address questions. Weekend scheduled. March 14th, 4PM tentative. 2 hours. Technical chair needed (Andy?) w/ another media open for raising hands (another irc channel). Agenda needed, designed by community, with times for each issue (3-4 issues). You say that issues should be raised on IRC; does that mean that you only want to discuss *additional* issues that are not yet on the Wiki, or are you basically requesting that people copy+paste the Wiki pages into IRC if they want to affirm the importance of these issues? Or is this more of a psychological exercise where Joe Mapper is allowed to speak his mind and be heard to make him happy (in which case it would be ok for 10 people in a row to say the same thing). See above. We waiting for reply. Licensing Working Group (LWG) going through the questions on the Wiki to make sure we have forwarded all the relevant legal question. Wiki will likely be updated in that process. The wiki isn't the only medium and we may have accidentally overlooked some other questions. The phone call is an attempt to address this and encourage more people to feel part of the process. Maybe we should hold the telephone call in Esperanto or Volapük. But seriously... Maybe transcribe the first call and translate and follow up the call with a German call or German mailing lists discussion, whichever is best for the regional community. Then again, the LWG may have made a bad decision here, we are human after all. Regards Grant ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
The purpose of the call on Saturday is to offer an additional channel of communication around the license - its intended to supplement the mailing lists and wiki, not to replace or to diminish the value of the work that the community has done putting together use cases and other documentation. The idea of the call comes down to this: mailing lists and wikis are great for debating and discovering some types of information, but they are also prone to misinterpretation. In my experience, we can spend a whole load of time flaming on the list and then we talk in person and everything was a mis-understanding or any problems are solved pretty quickly. Having an open license call was intended to be a step towards opening up a process that has confused and angered a lot of people and that is often criticised for being too closed. What I'd hope would come out of it is a clearer understanding of the process of the license change and some of the specifics around changing it. Please see this as the Foundation doing everything we can to open up and engage with the community. As for the language and timing, its a bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don't. Its always 2am somewhere and the fact is that the majority of people involved with OSM are in the EU. As Andy said, if there's enough demand we can host calls for other time zones. The same goes for other languages. I'd guess that English is the majority spoken language of the project, with German a close second. If someone from the German speaking community would like to volunteer to translate on a call, we can see about the logistics. Ultimately though, non-English speaking communities need better representation within the Foundation - this is something the Local Chapters working group is actively pursuing. As always, please let us know any constructive ideas. So far there have been no constructive suggestions from people who are criticizing the call, for a better way to run this on this thread. Nick n...@osmfoundation.org On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 10:58 AM, Simon Ward si...@bleah.co.uk wrote: On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 09:30:33PM +1100, Liz wrote: I don't find a telephone conference acceptable. While Frederick mentions the troubles of language, I don't want to be on the phone at 0200 local time. I'd rather be asleep, and my critical faculties probably would be asleep at that time even if I was nominally on the telephone. Mailing lists are much more international friendly methods of communication. What is it you (SteveC, Nick, etc) excpect to get out of the telephone conference that can’t be facilitated on the list? Simon -- A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.—John Gall -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkm46t0ACgkQj6/6lS/XEIr+oACdGGeO3Bq5kt2vzoiTYIurSLVG 3rUAniGOEIbxthGI34oZ8dseGO1NgP7c =MLjF -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk -- -- Nick Black twitter.com/nick_b ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 11:52 AM, Simon Ward si...@bleah.co.uk wrote: On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 11:21:49AM +, Nick Black wrote: The purpose of the call on Saturday is to offer an additional channel of communication around the license - its intended to supplement the mailing lists and wiki Thanks, that’s what I expected to hear. What I'd hope would come out of it is a clearer understanding of the process of the license change and some of the specifics around changing it. Please see this as the Foundation doing everything we can to open up and engage with the community. The Foundation could do more to engage with the community by participating more in list discussion. This is definitely a goal that the individual Foundation members can set to achieve. IMO, this is a case of finding the balance between looking inwards to the community for guidance and looking outwards to the business of the foundation (licences, local chapters, conferences, servers etc). The outbound activities of Foundation board + team members take a lot of time - we need to strike the right balance between engaging with the community and following up the things that matter to the community. Hey, if the community directly gets answers, it might argue the price of fish a little less. As for the language and timing, its a bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don't. Its always 2am somewhere and the fact is that the majority of people involved with OSM are in the EU. As Andy said, if there's enough demand we can host calls for other time zones. Well, that’s just it: You’re seeking ways to engage with the community, yet placing the burden on them to represent themselves, asking them to rearrange their schedules to participate in a call at a specific time. That’s not helping members of the community trust the process any more than before. The call is one channel that people can use. I really don't think its too much burden to ask people if they would like to participate in a call. As always, please let us know any constructive ideas. So far there have been no constructive suggestions from people who are criticizing the call, for a better way to run this on this thread. Active participation in the list. Take part in the discussion threads, give your opinions where you have them, answer questions if you have the answers, etc. Simon -- A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.—John Gall -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkm492QACgkQj6/6lS/XEIoheACeMlHXnIMPewTCh7Cr83NJW84A a0sAn3InqV3zORwYKSHzaiRvlCOuKaqw =vsGw -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk -- -- Nick Black twitter.com/nick_b ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 11:21:01AM +, Rob Myers wrote: coast of the US for example. But I've been involved in both of two meetings where decisions arrived at in the morning were reversed in the evening, and that didn't make the first group very happy at all. I think that, due to the inaccessibility, the phone calls should be rather seeking to hilight issues and answer questions, and not make any decisions as such. I’m assuming someone will be recording minutes, which can then be summarised back to the list and on the wiki, so the community can make the decisions. Simon -- A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.—John Gall signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-t...@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 11:21:49AM +, Nick Black wrote: The purpose of the call on Saturday is to offer an additional channel of communication around the license - its intended to supplement the mailing lists and wiki Thanks, that’s what I expected to hear. What I'd hope would come out of it is a clearer understanding of the process of the license change and some of the specifics around changing it. Please see this as the Foundation doing everything we can to open up and engage with the community. The Foundation could do more to engage with the community by participating more in list discussion. Hey, if the community directly gets answers, it might argue the price of fish a little less. As for the language and timing, its a bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don't. Its always 2am somewhere and the fact is that the majority of people involved with OSM are in the EU. As Andy said, if there's enough demand we can host calls for other time zones. Well, that’s just it: You’re seeking ways to engage with the community, yet placing the burden on them to represent themselves, asking them to rearrange their schedules to participate in a call at a specific time. That’s not helping members of the community trust the process any more than before. As always, please let us know any constructive ideas. So far there have been no constructive suggestions from people who are criticizing the call, for a better way to run this on this thread. Active participation in the list. Take part in the discussion threads, give your opinions where you have them, answer questions if you have the answers, etc. Simon -- A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.—John Gall signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-t...@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
