subject:"\[OSM\-talk\] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre\-Announcement"

On Sat, 16 Apr 2011 00:29:29 +0100
Dermot McNally derm...@gmail.com wrote:

 This licence change now gives every mapper the means of undermining
 the map through withholding of their own data, once freely given and
 now very likely a foundation of data created by other mappers, also in
 good faith. I understand that many mappers feel they _can't_ relicense
 some or all of their work, and that's a really tough situation. But
 mappers who just plain _won't_ agree to leave their data in, even
 though there is no legal obstacle to it, should strongly consider
 whether they are being true to the community they claim to be a part
 of.

Please consider the corollary to this

Why does the ODbL faction not start with a fork of ODbL compliant data?
Why do they need to force a split of the existing CC-by-SA data?

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

Mike N writes:
 Even a proper reversion script will cause much collateral damage for 
  the cases I'm aware of.

The whole point behind having a license is to be able to sue people
who violate it. We have a license which allows us to do that now. Is
anybody suing the copyright infringers?

No, they are not. They're not even sending demand letters. Has anybody
even BOTHERED to register their copyright (a low-cost and essential
first step for protecting your copyright)? Not that I know of.

Unless somebody has a theory under which there will be more mappers
suing more users, the only rational conclusion can be that the license
change will hurt OSM, and not help it at all. Thus, the only question
that people should be pondering is:

   How much damage to the map
   are people willing to accept
in exchange for
  no benefit at all?

People speak of consensus, but there is no consensus, because there
are a number of people who object to the license change (and this is
no secret to anyone). So, can we please stop talking about consensus,
and start talking about ramming the license change down the throats of
people who love the map and aren't willing to walk away from it?

Because clearly, the people who don't care about how badly the map
will be damaged without their contributions, have already left.

Changing the license is butt-stupid. Always has been, always will be.

It's never too late to give up on a butt-stupid idea, and it's never
early enough.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

Frederik Ramm writes:
  We're not sacrificing countries. We saw that we have built our project 
  on (legal) sand,

Nonsense. Your choice of what to tag and how to tag it is a creative
choice. You own that expression of the idea of a map. There is no
reason for you to wait to sue somebody for infringing your
copyright. If you aren't willing to do it now, why should we believe
that you're going to do it once the license has changed. If you aren't
willing to sue somebody once the license has changed, then why in
God's name do you want a different license?

Changing the license is very expensive and brings with it zero
practical benefit. Or, to misquote Charlie Sheen, Duh, Losing!

Let me say this again: anybody who defends the license change should
be able to name an infringer whom they aren't suing because the
license stops them, and should be able to outline their plan for suing
the infringer. The plan should include the infringed portion of the
work and the funding source for the legal team.

On the bright side, the sooner we stop trying to change the license,
the less OSM will be damaged, and the sooner we can heal the
community.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

2011-04-16 Thread David Murn

On Fri, 2011-04-15 at 17:09 -0700, Kai Krueger wrote:
Dermot McNally wrote:

FWIW I would have favoured earlier specific requests for a vote, but
it's basically been an impossible position for the LWG from what I can
see as an outsider.

No, the vote part really isn't that difficult. Wikipedia managed to hold a
vote on their licensing change.

I never followed the wikipedia change, but did they create a new
untested licence? Did they ask users to agree to the licence over a 12
month period? How many changes/revisions did their licence undergo
between being announced and finally being accepted?

Im fairly sure the answers to these questions is significantly different
to the answers in the OSM licence change situation.

David

Dermot McNally wrote:

But mappers who just plain _won't_ agree to leave their data in, even
though there is no legal obstacle to it, should strongly consider
whether they are being true to the community they claim to be a part
of.

Until there is a clear vote of the community to determine what they want it
is impossible to say which side of the debate is true to the community. At
the moment, we simply don't know. And so it is unhelpful to accuse long time
OSM enthusiasts as not being true to the community because they disagree
with your opinion. Many of them have the community just as much at hart as
the proponents. They just disagree or are unsure on the effects this change
will have on it.

Kai

--
View this message in context:
http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/OpenStreetMap-License-Change-Phase-3-Pre-Announcement-tp6266295p6278003.html
Sent from the General Discussion mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

2011-04-16 Thread Mike Dupont

On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 9:18 AM, David Murn da...@incanberra.com.au wrote:

 I never followed the wikipedia change, but did they create a new
 untested licence?  Did they ask users to agree to the licence over a 12
 month period?  How many changes/revisions did their licence undergo
 between being announced and finally being accepted?


And I think they included the people who made the original license in the
review and discussion which I feel is missing here.
What does creative commons say about these new licenses and terms, have they
been asked to review the newest batch?
___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

Dermot McNally writes:
  But mappers who just plain _won't_ agree to leave their data in,
  even though there is no legal obstacle to it, should strongly
  consider whether they are being true to the community they claim to
  be a part of.

In every schism, it's not clear who is splitting from whom. Don't
presume an answer without first asking the question.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

2011-04-16 Thread Dermot McNally

On 16 April 2011 07:00, Elizabeth Dodd ed...@billiau.net wrote:

 Why does the ODbL faction not start with a fork of ODbL compliant data?
 Why do they need to force a split of the existing CC-by-SA data?

A lot of the differences of opinion on this matter are finding
expression in the words people choose to use to describe the different
points of view. I found your use of faction interesting enough to
check some dictionary definitions of the word. Here's one I found
particularly apt:

1.  a group of people forming a minority within a larger body, esp a
dissentious group

So let's see which point of view ends up mainstream and which belongs
to a dissenting minority. So far, as I look at the volume of map data,
as I look at the vast majority of the people who have built and
maintained the map and the infrastructure on which it runs, what I see
is people who, sometimes with misgivings, are throwing their weight
behind the licence change. Among such people I see unity of purpose.

Opposition to the change seems to stem from a number of disparate of
often contradictory reasons, none of which I personally find
compelling. What I can not with any seriousness regard the opposition
I have seen as is the mainstream. It is on the anti-change side that
I see not one faction, but several.

Others may not (yet) share my view, and should observe the rate at
which the remaining community votes yes and no. Nothing in this
process will remove the freedom from anybody to continue to use the
data already mapped exactly as they always have, nor to continue
maintaining a data set under those terms. But if The Community should
be seen to support the licence change, I will see it as irresponsible
for individual mappers to take their ball and go home just because
they can.

Dermot

-- 
--
Igaühel on siin oma laul
ja ma oma ei leiagi üles

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

2011-04-16 Thread Dermot McNally

On 16 April 2011 08:28, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote:

 In every schism, it's not clear who is splitting from whom. Don't
 presume an answer without first asking the question.

Actually, I have thought widely on this. My slightly earlier email
this morning outlines my thought on what defines the mainstream in
this difficult issue.

Dermot

-- 
--
Igaühel on siin oma laul
ja ma oma ei leiagi üles

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

On Sat, 16 Apr 2011 08:11:11 +0200
Mike  Dupont jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com wrote:

 On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 6:14 PM, Anthony o...@inbox.org wrote:
 
  On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 6:55 PM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org
  wrote:
   Hi,
  
   David Murn wrote:
  
   Out of interest Grant, what other large-scale open source
   projects have changed their licence the way that OSM has?  In
   fact, changed their licence full-stop..?
  
   Wikipedia went from GFDL to CC-BY-SA.
 
  Wikipedia went from GFDL to a GFDL/CC-BY-SA dual license - with the
  help of the FSF.
 
  If OSMF wanted to go from CC-BY-SA to a CC-BY-SA/ODbL dual license,
  that would greatly simplify things.
 
 
 Yes, that would make great sense, but I would like to see some more
 expert opinions, expecially the people who build this entire open
 source thing to begin with.
 Did anyone ever contact Eben about this new license? The gpl was the
 basis for the creative commons, and you are saying it is not good
 enough, so I think you should be able to convince him as a lawyer
 about this.
 
 If this new thing is really needed, then it should be easy to
 convince the experts about it.
 
 Here are two points I would like to see :
 1. a porting of the new terms to other languages and jurisdictions.
 2. a review and blessing of the new contract by the software freedom
 law center, the open source institute and the creative commons
 
 There is not even a porting of the new terms and license and contract
 to other jurisdictions, or translations.
 At least creative commons has tried to port itself to other places
 
 You are asking people to agree to some contract that is not
 translated into their language and may not be applicable in their
 jurisdiction, they might even be minors, I find this needs to be
 looked at carefully.
 
 Lets get the  license and contract submitted to  
 license-rev...@opensource.org,  and to
 cc-commun...@lists.ibiblio.org, for even a discussion outside this
 little circle, even an opinion from Lawrence *Lessig* or Eben Moglen
 softwarefreedom.org,  would greatly interest me.
 
 It should be possible to get bessings from legal experts and license
 experts in the world of open source and free software. It should be
 possible to get this contract reviewed and approved by OSI as well.
 
 I personally will wait and see what people who I trust and respect
 have to say about this topic who are not involved and not partial,
 some type of neutral and calm review of the entire situation.
 
 This entire discussion has gotten very emotional and personal, lets
 get some neutral third party expert opinions.
 
 mike

So has anyone asked the FOSS gurus of licensing?
I have never seen it mentioned while I was subscribed to legal-talk. I
am quite prepared to start writing emails (phrased neutrally) requesting
an opinion if these people have not been asked before.

If then the opinion is that the new licence has merit, we then need
work on how the contract provisions fit in with other legal codes not
just those derived from either the Westminster or Napoleonic codes.

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

On Fri, 15 Apr 2011 08:34:20 +1000
David Murn da...@incanberra.com.au wrote:

 On Thu, 2011-04-14 at 20:10 +0100, Grant Slater wrote:
 
  I am sure there are going to be a few cases where difficult
  decisions are going to have to be made. We will not have been the
  only open source project to have had to make these sorts of
  decisions.
 
 Out of interest Grant, what other large-scale open source projects
 have changed their licence the way that OSM has?  In fact, changed
 their licence full-stop..?
 
 David
 

OpenOffice.org has had a major fork just recently. The LibreOffice fork
has chosen different licensing arrangements, including the contributors
retaining their own copyright.
http://www.libreoffice.org/get-involved/developers/
and interestingly this assessment of how LibreOffice is going
http://webmink.com/2011/02/11/is-libreoffice-open-by-rule/
We can also note how the new fork is handling their compound
licensing issue.

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

2011-04-16 Thread Dermot McNally

On 16 April 2011 08:31, Elizabeth Dodd ed...@billiau.net wrote:

 So has anyone asked the FOSS gurus of licensing?
 I have never seen it mentioned while I was subscribed to legal-talk. I
 am quite prepared to start writing emails (phrased neutrally) requesting
 an opinion if these people have not been asked before.

 If then the opinion is that the new licence has merit, we then need
 work on how the contract provisions fit in with other legal codes not
 just those derived from either the Westminster or Napoleonic codes.

How long have you been in this discussion, Elizabeth? Quite a while,
according to my recollection. Given that you seem to now see a
requirement for this kind of validation, I find it strange that you
wouldn't have sought it at a much earlier stage than this. Normally
abject opposition should come after, not before, neutral appraisal
of the proposal, shouldn't it?

Dermot

-- 
--
Igaühel on siin oma laul
ja ma oma ei leiagi üles

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

On 16 April 2011 17:37, Elizabeth Dodd ed...@billiau.net wrote:
 OpenOffice.org has had a major fork just recently. The LibreOffice fork
 has chosen different licensing arrangements, including the contributors
 retaining their own copyright.
 http://www.libreoffice.org/get-involved/developers/
 and interestingly this assessment of how LibreOffice is going
 http://webmink.com/2011/02/11/is-libreoffice-open-by-rule/
 We can also note how the new fork is handling their compound
 licensing issue.

What's more interesting is Oracle's move to wash their hands of direct
control over OpenOffice...

http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/15/oracle_letting_openoffice_go/

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

On 16 April 2011 17:42, Dermot McNally derm...@gmail.com wrote:
 wouldn't have sought it at a much earlier stage than this. Normally
 abject opposition should come after, not before, neutral appraisal
 of the proposal, shouldn't it?

There has been so many issues with the new license, the new
contributor terms and the way the whole thing as been handled that
it's hard to know where to start pulling at threads, pull the wrong
one and the whole jumper will fall to bits...

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

2011-04-16 Thread Lester Caine


John Smith wrote:

On 16 April 2011 17:37, Elizabeth Dodded...@billiau.net  wrote:

OpenOffice.org has had a major fork just recently. The LibreOffice fork
has chosen different licensing arrangements, including the contributors
retaining their own copyright.
http://www.libreoffice.org/get-involved/developers/
and interestingly this assessment of how LibreOffice is going
http://webmink.com/2011/02/11/is-libreoffice-open-by-rule/
We can also note how the new fork is handling their compound
licensing issue.


What's more interesting is Oracle's move to wash their hands of direct
control over OpenOffice...

http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/15/oracle_letting_openoffice_go/


Probably pertinent how current this move is ...
I think that the fact that the main development team simply moved over to 
LibreOffice was something Oracle had not anticipated, but is exactly what open 
source is about?


Unlike OO, OSM has a number of 'competitors' providing the same data, so a split 
is less likely to happen, but I do wonder if it isn't about time to readdress 
the area of merging data from different sources? Rather than throwing everything 
in the one pot and mangling it, creating a more open data interface so that 
third parties can supply feeds in much the same way as we use a range of 
background tiles at the moment. I am thinking directly here about paralleling 
the current OS data with OSM data.


--
Lester Caine - G8HFL
-
Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact
L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk
EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/
Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk//
Firebird - http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

2011-04-16 Thread Mike Dupont

On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 10:07 AM, Lester Caine les...@lsces.co.uk wrote:

 if it isn't about time to readdress the area of merging data from different
 sources? Rather than throwing everything in the one pot and mangling it,
 creating a more open data interface so that third parties can supply feeds
 in much the same way as we use a range of background tiles at the moment. I
 am thinking directly here about paralleling the current OS data with OSM
 data.


That is a great idea.
___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

On Sat, 16 Apr 2011 08:42:00 +0100
Dermot McNally derm...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 16 April 2011 08:31, Elizabeth Dodd ed...@billiau.net wrote:
 
  So has anyone asked the FOSS gurus of licensing?
  I have never seen it mentioned while I was subscribed to
  legal-talk. I am quite prepared to start writing emails (phrased
  neutrally) requesting an opinion if these people have not been
  asked before.
 
  If then the opinion is that the new licence has merit, we then need
  work on how the contract provisions fit in with other legal codes
  not just those derived from either the Westminster or Napoleonic
  codes.
 
 How long have you been in this discussion, Elizabeth? Quite a while,
 according to my recollection. Given that you seem to now see a
 requirement for this kind of validation, I find it strange that you
 wouldn't have sought it at a much earlier stage than this. Normally
 abject opposition should come after, not before, neutral appraisal
 of the proposal, shouldn't it?
 
 Dermot
 

So as you have forgotten the beginning, Australian mappers have a
number of difficulties with the proposed new licence and contributor
terms. That is, a majority of Australian mappers. 
We have estimated our exposure in our continent to the risk of data
loss as very high (i forget the proportion, someone will give you the
information if you want confirmation).
Where I stand, I do not see a minority against the new licence. It may
well be parallax error at my end, or it may be the same at your end.
However, I am unable to sign up to the contributor terms. I cannot sign
over my work because some of it is in breach of those terms.

I am not withdrawing my stuff because I wish to vandalise the map. 
I have used a number of sources which are CC-by-SA, and that prohibits
me from signing.

Certainly we should consider Mike's idea, and not hide behind our
existing ideas.
Will you be writing the emails to the people Mike mentioned?


___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

On 16 April 2011 17:53, Lester Caine les...@lsces.co.uk wrote:
 The whole database should be public domain, and any third party pushing
 'commercial' data into that should understand that. Even the UK government
 have now accepted that we should have free access to this sort of data, so
 my own 'need' for OSM has been somewhat diluted since I have an open
 alternative. I was looking at mirroring my own copy of OSM, but the OS data
 gives me the facilities I need with less hassle.

Doesn't OS require attribution if you use their data?

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement


On 04/16/2011 02:05 AM, andrzej zaborowski wrote:

On 16 April 2011 01:29, Dermot McNallyderm...@gmail.com  wrote:

This licence change now gives every mapper the means of undermining
the map through withholding of their own data, once freely given and
now very likely a foundation of data created by other mappers, also in
good faith. I understand that many mappers feel they _can't_ relicense
some or all of their work, and that's a really tough situation. But
mappers who just plain _won't_ agree to leave their data in, even
though there is no legal obstacle to it, should strongly consider
whether they are being true to the community they claim to be a part
of.


At this point it's only known that there's an unspecified non-zero
part of the community which wants OSM to switch license.  Not everyone
needs to be true to that part of the community just like not everyone
needs to be true to the part that wants OSM data in Public Domain or
the part that drinks coffee with milk etc.


Let us try and separate the issue of license change from the issue of 
the CT for a moment. Let us assume that there was no immediate license 
change planned; that OSMF intended to continue using CC-BY-SA for now; 
and that they only sought CT agreement from mappers, in order to make a 
potential future license change easier.


The CT contain this clause whereby it becomes impossible to do what 
Dermot writes above - if 2/3 of mappers agree to use another free and 
open license, then that is the new license and everyone's data is 
changed to that new license.


I think that *that* is the major change here, and I have outlined in the 
past that I believe that you cannot be a part of a crowdsourced mapping 
effort if you consider your contribution to be only rented out to the 
project. If you want to participate in OSM, where all the time others 
will build upon your work, then you cannot sensibly say but if you 
decide to change your license later I might choose to take away my 
contribution. If you contribute to OSM, you pour a glass of water into 
an ocean. You cannot wrap that in plastic and label it yours. I made a 
comparison with voluntary work in real-life communities; if you have 
spent a lot of time and love helping to build a nice playground for the 
village school but later the whole school decides to adopt some 
pedadogic direction of which you don't approve and you put your kid 
elsewhere, you cannot tear town the playground. It wouldn't be right 
(and it would be very unlikely to make you happy).


Now if someone says I'm willing to sign the CT on the condition that 
before OSMF switches to ODbL, they execute the exact license change 
procedure outlined in the CT, with asking 2/3 of active mappers etc., 
then this is something I can understand and respect.


I do however have the impression that there are some people for whom 
calling for a public vote is just another means to delay and hopefully 
derail the process, and secretly they never intended to continue 
supporting the project after a license change anyway. These people are 
dishonest, they should simply click disagree and leave. I have no 
sympathy or patience for people who are unwilling to make the kind of 
committment requested by the CT. If you want full control over your 
data then make your own little OSM just for yourself.


I have a suggestion, one which we could implement in true crowdsourced 
spirit and without any OSMF involvement. We simply draw up a document 
that is basically a modified version of the current contributor terms, 
which says I am willing to make the following contract with OSMF on the 
additional condition of OSMF holding the 2/3 vote as described below 
before they change from ODbL to CC-BY-SA. We then devise some sort of 
sufficiently legally binding way for people to sign this document. 
Everyone who thinks that the CT are ok in principle but who would like a 
proper vote first, signs this document instead of the real CT.


Then one of three things will happen:

* The number of people who sign this is close to zero. This would then 
mean that those calling for a vote are unwilling to sign the CT anyway, 
and whichever way the vote goes it would not change the fact that 
they're leaving - in that case, why bother to hold a vote.


* The number of people who sign this is so small that their edits 
practically don't make a difference and OSMF might decide to go ahead 
and ignore these people, and treat them like they had said no.


* The number of people who sign this is significant, in which case OSMF 
would be very tempted to actually hold the vote before switching ot ODbL 
- something they are perfectly within their right to do, even if 
everyone else has signed the standard CT -, and everybody would be 
happy. Of course all this would have to be watertight enough to not 
allow someone to back out if the vote result is pro ODbL.


There's of course a drawback to this, and that is that while you sign 
the CT with conditions

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement


Hi,

On 04/16/2011 10:29 AM, Frederik Ramm wrote:

We simply draw up a document
that is basically a modified version of the current contributor terms,
which says I am willing to make the following contract with OSMF on the
additional condition of OSMF holding the 2/3 vote as described below
before they change from ODbL to CC-BY-SA.


Oops. That should have rad from CC-BY-SA to ODbL.

Bye
Frederik

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement


Hi,

On 04/16/2011 01:29 AM, Dermot McNally wrote:

FWIW I would have favoured earlier specific requests for a vote, but
it's basically been an impossible position for the LWG from what I can
see as an outsider. On the one hand, everybody wants to feel consulted
about the change. On the other, plenty of people have complained
throughout the process about being offered a half-baked solution.
Turns out this stuff is complicated.


With hindsight, the proper way of doing this would have been to setup 
the LWG some time around 2007, have LWG reach out to the community in 
the wides possible manner, make sure people understand the problems, 
maybe even have national groups in some countries, devise possible 
solutions, and seek community involvement in every step.


Apart from the fact that this would have required more manpower an 
patience than might be available from the volunteers involved in OSM, 
this attempt at including everyone would probably have been in vain 
since OSM grows so fast. Assume that some time in mid-2008 a vote of all 
registered users has resulted in a 95% we must drop CC-BY-SA vote; 
then in mid-2009 you would already have had two new users for every one 
who had taken part in that vote, new users who have not been consulted 
and who have not been part of the process. And so on!


One would then have to say to these people what you are saying now:


I'm not the first person to say so on the lists, but it seems to bear
repeating - the process has not been a secret, the key details of what
problem the change attempts to solve have been documented for a long
time now and absolutely anybody with a thirst for knowledge on the
matter has had many resources at his or her disposal.


But, just as today, this would be unlikely to make them happy. In our 
concrete case,



When I first
became aware of the documentation and read it, I certainly felt
consulted, and very soon after it became possible to indicate
approval, it was clear to me both that the promoters of the change
wished me to do so (at that point I felt asked) and how I might go
about doing so.


The situation you describe is now something like 1.5 years in the 
past... there will ALWAYS be people who feel they were not consulted, 
and if the process takes years rather than months, they will (at least 
for the foreseeable future) ALWAYS be the majority.


I'm very glad we have at least made CT agreement mandatory for new users 
now which sort of softens the issue.


Bye
Frederik

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

2011-04-16 Thread Lester Caine


John Smith wrote:

On 16 April 2011 17:53, Lester Caineles...@lsces.co.uk  wrote:

The whole database should be public domain, and any third party pushing
'commercial' data into that should understand that. Even the UK government
have now accepted that we should have free access to this sort of data, so
my own 'need' for OSM has been somewhat diluted since I have an open
alternative. I was looking at mirroring my own copy of OSM, but the OS data
gives me the facilities I need with less hassle.


Doesn't OS require attribution if you use their data?

Same as adding a link to OSM where that is the source ...

--
Lester Caine - G8HFL
-
Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact
L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk
EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/
Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk//
Firebird - http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

On 16 April 2011 19:04, Lester Caine les...@lsces.co.uk wrote:
 John Smith wrote:

 On 16 April 2011 17:53, Lester Caineles...@lsces.co.uk  wrote:

 The whole database should be public domain, and any third party pushing
 'commercial' data into that should understand that. Even the UK
 government
 have now accepted that we should have free access to this sort of data,
 so
 my own 'need' for OSM has been somewhat diluted since I have an open
 alternative. I was looking at mirroring my own copy of OSM, but the OS
 data
 gives me the facilities I need with less hassle.

 Doesn't OS require attribution if you use their data?

 Same as adding a link to OSM where that is the source ...

So your original suggestion that the OS recognises your suggestion
about things should be public domain is patently false.

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

2011-04-16 Thread Lester Caine


John Smith wrote:

On 16 April 2011 19:04, Lester Caineles...@lsces.co.uk  wrote:

John Smith wrote:


On 16 April 2011 17:53, Lester Caineles...@lsces.co.uk   wrote:


The whole database should be public domain, and any third party pushing
'commercial' data into that should understand that. Even the UK
government
have now accepted that we should have free access to this sort of data,
so
my own 'need' for OSM has been somewhat diluted since I have an open
alternative. I was looking at mirroring my own copy of OSM, but the OS
data
gives me the facilities I need with less hassle.


Doesn't OS require attribution if you use their data?


Same as adding a link to OSM where that is the source ...


So your original suggestion that the OS recognises your suggestion
about things should be public domain is patently false.


No I said 'free access to this sort of data'. But I don't see that having the 
courtesy to recognise where data can from should be any sort of a problem. 
'Requiring it' just acknowledges that some people do not extend that common 
courtesy. I find no restrictions on what I need to do with the data.


--
Lester Caine - G8HFL
-
Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact
L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk
EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/
Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk//
Firebird - http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

On 16 April 2011 19:49, Lester Caine les...@lsces.co.uk wrote:
 No I said 'free access to this sort of data'. But I don't see that having
 the courtesy to recognise where data can from should be any sort of a
 problem. 'Requiring it' just acknowledges that some people do not extend
 that common courtesy. I find no restrictions on what I need to do with the
 data.

Just because attribution is not restriction for you, doesn't mean
others feel the same way, OS (along with many other data producers)
require it, yet the PD proponents don't want any such strings.

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

2011-04-16 Thread Ian Dees

Wow, I still have yet to receive a straight answer from anyone and it
doesn't look like I will. The trolls have come out yet again. Sorry for
that. I have been beaten into submission.

On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 6:29 PM, Dermot McNally derm...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 16 April 2011 00:07, Ian Dees ian.d...@gmail.com wrote:

  Thanks for asking me (if this were a vote my answer would be No, but in
  the interest of moving on from this nonsense and keeping data flowing
 I'll
  eventually say Yes), but the important part of my question was everyone
  else -- the community of OpenStreetMap. When were *they* asked?

 FWIW I would have favoured earlier specific requests for a vote, but
 it's basically been an impossible position for the LWG from what I can
 see as an outsider. On the one hand, everybody wants to feel consulted
 about the change. On the other, plenty of people have complained
 throughout the process about being offered a half-baked solution.
 Turns out this stuff is complicated.


No, it's not complicated. When whoever it was decided that we need to change
license, the *first* thing that should have happened is a communication of
the desire with the community, information about it presented clearly and
thoughtfully, questions responded to in a timely manner, and a vote held by
the active mappers to confirm that yes, this change should be pursued.

Instead what happened is... none of that. I appreciate the hard work of
those that spent the time to draw up the new license and work with a small
fraction of the community to make decisions on it, but I think they put the
cart before the horse.

Anyway, I apologize for bringing this up again and degenerating talk@ into a
field of flames. I was hoping to get a straight answer this time. I'll go
unsubscribe from talk (like a lot of others :) ) and click the accept
button.
___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

On 16 April 2011 22:10, Ian Dees ian.d...@gmail.com wrote:
 doesn't look like I will. The trolls have come out yet again. Sorry for

 No, it's not complicated. When whoever it was decided that we need to change
 license, the *first* thing that should have happened is a communication of
 the desire with the community, information about it presented clearly and
 thoughtfully, questions responded to in a timely manner, and a vote held by
 the active mappers to confirm that yes, this change should be pursued.
 Instead what happened is... none of that. I appreciate the hard work of
 those that spent the time to draw up the new license and work with a small
 fraction of the community to make decisions on it, but I think they put the
 cart before the horse.
 Anyway, I apologize for bringing this up again and degenerating talk@ into a
 field of flames. I was hoping to get a straight answer this time. I'll go
 unsubscribe from talk (like a lot of others :) ) and click the accept
 button.

Many of those that you deem as trolls are in the same position as you,
no one can get straight answers to some fairly simple questions, and
it seems things are being pushed ahead regardless so what are people
supposed to do other than leave if they disagree, like you have chosen
to do.

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement


Ian,

On 04/16/2011 02:10 PM, Ian Dees wrote:

Wow, I still have yet to receive a straight answer from anyone and it
doesn't look like I will.


You asked when the community of OpenStreetMap was asked about the 
license change.


...


No, it's not complicated. When whoever it was decided that we need to
change license, the *first* thing that should have happened is a
communication of the desire with the community, information about it
presented clearly and thoughtfully, questions responded to in a timely
manner, and a vote held by the active mappers to confirm that yes, this
change should be pursued.


I think, historically, the decision making process was not 1. decide 
that we need a new license, 2. let's go look for one, but rather a 
little-step-by-little-step process.


The question is, who is the community of OpenStreetMap. Anyone 
committed enough to come to the first State of the Map conference in 
Manchester (2007) was certainly involved as this is where we held a 
panel discussion on the license. But even if a vote had been held at 
that conference, could it still be considered binding today? Anyone 
reading either the talk list, or the osm-announce list, or any of the 
Australian, German, Spanish, French, German, Czech, Dutch, or Colombian 
mailing lists or some of the forums, will have been aware of Pieren's 
poll (http://doodle.com/feqszqirqqxi4r7w) which, even though not an 
official vote, gave people the option to formally express an opinion and 
be counted.


Of course you could have sent an email to everyone, to catch those who 
do not read the lists. But then, to be honest, if someone doesn't have 
any background to the discussion and is asked, out of the blue, whether 
they support a license change - would that really help? Would they not 
have to be presented with the causes for and against - and who would 
have the authority to decide *what* they are presented with? And if they 
are isolationist enough to not even read the low-volume announce list, 
do we really have to assume they are interested?


You write information presented clearly and thoughtfully, but if you 
read the histoy of the why you shold vote yes and why you should vote 
no pages on the Wiki, it should become clear that it certainly not an 
easy task to present information clearly and thoughtfully and without bias.


Bye
Frederik

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

I think Frederick gave you the best answer possible. It's not that the
community was *asked* by some overarching committee, but instead that
it just floated up. Like a turd in the toilet. Frankly, I never
thought it would come to actually deleting data. I always thought that
that was OBVIOUSLY so insane that *somebody* would have killed the
idea of relicensing.

The trouble is, is that, just as no one person is responsible for
creating the idea, no one person has the ability to kill it. Maybe
SteveC, but he's convinced that Google is going to steal our data. As
if our data had any value once separated from the community that keeps
it alive.
-russ

Ian Dees writes:
  Wow, I still have yet to receive a straight answer from anyone and it
  doesn't look like I will. The trolls have come out yet again. Sorry for
  that. I have been beaten into submission.
  
  On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 6:29 PM, Dermot McNally derm...@gmail.com wrote:
  
   On 16 April 2011 00:07, Ian Dees ian.d...@gmail.com wrote:
  
Thanks for asking me (if this were a vote my answer would be No, but in
the interest of moving on from this nonsense and keeping data flowing
   I'll
eventually say Yes), but the important part of my question was everyone
else -- the community of OpenStreetMap. When were *they* asked?
  
   FWIW I would have favoured earlier specific requests for a vote, but
   it's basically been an impossible position for the LWG from what I can
   see as an outsider. On the one hand, everybody wants to feel consulted
   about the change. On the other, plenty of people have complained
   throughout the process about being offered a half-baked solution.
   Turns out this stuff is complicated.
  
  
  No, it's not complicated. When whoever it was decided that we need to change
  license, the *first* thing that should have happened is a communication of
  the desire with the community, information about it presented clearly and
  thoughtfully, questions responded to in a timely manner, and a vote held by
  the active mappers to confirm that yes, this change should be pursued.
  
  Instead what happened is... none of that. I appreciate the hard work of
  those that spent the time to draw up the new license and work with a small
  fraction of the community to make decisions on it, but I think they put the
  cart before the horse.
  
  Anyway, I apologize for bringing this up again and degenerating talk@ into a
  field of flames. I was hoping to get a straight answer this time. I'll go
  unsubscribe from talk (like a lot of others :) ) and click the accept
  button.
  Wow, I still have yet to receive a straight answer from anyone and it 
  doesn#39;t look like I will. The trolls have come out yet again. Sorry for 
  that. I have been beaten into submission.brbrdiv class=gmail_quoteOn 
  Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 6:29 PM, Dermot McNally span dir=ltrlt;a 
  href=mailto:derm...@gmail.com;derm...@gmail.com/agt;/span wrote:br
  blockquote class=gmail_quote style=margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px 
  #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;div class=imOn 16 April 2011 00:07, Ian 
  Dees lt;a href=mailto:ian.d...@gmail.com;ian.d...@gmail.com/agt; 
  wrote:br
  
  br
  gt; Thanks for asking me (if this were a vote my answer would be 
  quot;Noquot;, but inbr
  gt; the interest of moving on from this nonsense and keeping data flowing 
  I#39;llbr
  gt; eventually say quot;Yesquot;), but the important part of my question 
  was everyonebr
  gt; else -- the community of OpenStreetMap. When were *they* asked?br
  br
  /divFWIW I would have favoured earlier specific requests for a vote, 
  butbr
  it#39;s basically been an impossible position for the LWG from what I 
  canbr
  see as an outsider. On the one hand, everybody wants to feel consultedbr
  about the change. On the other, plenty of people have complainedbr
  throughout the process about being offered a half-baked solution.br
  Turns out this stuff is complicated./blockquotedivbr/divdivNo, 
  it#39;s not complicated. When whoever it was decided that we need to change 
  license, the *first* thing that should have happened is a communication of 
  the desire with the community, information about it presented clearly and 
  thoughtfully, questions responded to in a timely manner, and a vote held by 
  the active mappers to confirm that yes, this change should be pursued./div
  divbr/divdivInstead what happened is... none of that. I appreciate 
  the hard work of those that spent the time to draw up the new license and 
  work with a small fraction of the community to make decisions on it, but I 
  think they put the cart before the horse./div
  divbr/divdivAnyway, I apologize for bringing this up again and 
  degenerating talk@ into a field of flames. I was hoping to get a straight 
  answer this time. I#39;ll go unsubscribe from talk (like a lot of others :) 
  ) and click the accept button./div
  /div
  ___
  talk mailing list

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

2011-04-16 Thread Graham Jones

My thinking on this is very similar.   I have no particular objection to the
new licence and contributor terms - I don't really care which licence my
contributions are governed by.

I am very surprised at the apparent tolerance to loss of data from the map
for the sake of transferring to a more robust licence.

I am also surprised that we are going to the compulsory re-licensing when
there are still (as far as I can tell without looking too closely) doubts
over the compatibility of significant datasources with the new licence or
contributor terms - From what I can tell from a few wiki pages, it is not
clear whether OS Opendata in the UK, or Nearmap in Austrailia is compatible.
  I would have expected these issues to be resolved before forcing people to
re-licence.

It is because it is not clear whether we will have to delete all data from
these sources that I have not accepted the new licence yet - My view is that
if we have to delete that data, then we should not bother re-licensing.  I
am concerned that if I accept the new licence/contributor terms that I will
be seen to be supporting deleting this data, which I do not.   I think this
is the same issue as Ian's question about how we will decide if the change
is right or not.

If these issues have been resolved, and there is a mechanism for deciding
what level of data loss is acceptable, then I will happily re-licence my own
data, but I am looking for some reassurance before I do so.

Regards


Graham.

On 16 April 2011 16:20, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote:

 I think Frederick gave you the best answer possible. It's not that the
 community was *asked* by some overarching committee, but instead that
 it just floated up. Like a turd in the toilet. Frankly, I never
 thought it would come to actually deleting data. I always thought that
 that was OBVIOUSLY so insane that *somebody* would have killed the
 idea of relicensing.

 The trouble is, is that, just as no one person is responsible for
 creating the idea, no one person has the ability to kill it. Maybe
 SteveC, but he's convinced that Google is going to steal our data. As
 if our data had any value once separated from the community that keeps
 it alive.
 -russ

 Ian Dees writes:
   Wow, I still have yet to receive a straight answer from anyone and it
   doesn't look like I will. The trolls have come out yet again. Sorry for
   that. I have been beaten into submission.
  
   On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 6:29 PM, Dermot McNally derm...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  
On 16 April 2011 00:07, Ian Dees ian.d...@gmail.com wrote:
   
 Thanks for asking me (if this were a vote my answer would be No,
 but in
 the interest of moving on from this nonsense and keeping data
 flowing
I'll
 eventually say Yes), but the important part of my question was
 everyone
 else -- the community of OpenStreetMap. When were *they* asked?
   
FWIW I would have favoured earlier specific requests for a vote, but
it's basically been an impossible position for the LWG from what I can
see as an outsider. On the one hand, everybody wants to feel consulted
about the change. On the other, plenty of people have complained
throughout the process about being offered a half-baked solution.
Turns out this stuff is complicated.
  
  
   No, it's not complicated. When whoever it was decided that we need to
 change
   license, the *first* thing that should have happened is a communication
 of
   the desire with the community, information about it presented clearly
 and
   thoughtfully, questions responded to in a timely manner, and a vote held
 by
   the active mappers to confirm that yes, this change should be pursued.
  
   Instead what happened is... none of that. I appreciate the hard work of
   those that spent the time to draw up the new license and work with a
 small
   fraction of the community to make decisions on it, but I think they put
 the
   cart before the horse.
  
   Anyway, I apologize for bringing this up again and degenerating talk@into a
   field of flames. I was hoping to get a straight answer this time. I'll
 go
   unsubscribe from talk (like a lot of others :) ) and click the accept
   button.
   Wow, I still have yet to receive a straight answer from anyone and it
 doesn#39;t look like I will. The trolls have come out yet again. Sorry for
 that. I have been beaten into submission.brbrdiv class=gmail_quoteOn
 Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 6:29 PM, Dermot McNally span dir=ltrlt;a
 href=mailto:derm...@gmail.com;derm...@gmail.com/agt;/span
 wrote:br
   blockquote class=gmail_quote style=margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px
 #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;div class=imOn 16 April 2011 00:07, Ian
 Dees lt;a href=mailto:ian.d...@gmail.com;ian.d...@gmail.com/agt;
 wrote:br
  
   br
   gt; Thanks for asking me (if this were a vote my answer would be
 quot;Noquot;, but inbr
   gt; the interest of moving on from this nonsense and keeping data
 flowing I#39;llbr
   gt; eventually say quot;Yesquot;), but the

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement


Hi,

On 04/16/2011 05:40 PM, Graham Jones wrote:

I am also surprised that we are going to the compulsory re-licensing
when there are still (as far as I can tell without looking too closely)
doubts over the compatibility of significant datasources with the new
licence or contributor terms - From what I can tell from a few wiki
pages, it is not clear whether OS Opendata in the UK, or Nearmap in
Austrailia is compatible.   I would have expected these issues to be
resolved before forcing people to re-licence.


Isn't it funny how, just over a year ago, we couldn't care less about 
anything the Ordnace Survey did, and suddenly we are a project that must 
choose their license according to what is compatible with OS?



If these issues have been resolved, and there is a mechanism for
deciding what level of data loss is acceptable, then I will happily
re-licence my own data, but I am looking for some reassurance before I
do so.


I say to you the same I said to Ian - even if OSMF would publish what 
mechanism they plan to use (and I'm pretty sure they don't have one 
yet), then that mechanism would not become part of the contract and it 
could be changed at any later time, say, after majorities in the OSMF 
board have changed after the next election or something.


I'm sorry but I think you can either trust people to do the right thing 
or not trust them, but nobody will give you a written statement (or if 
they do it won't be worth much).


Bye
Frederik

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement


Hi,

On 04/16/2011 04:13 PM, Ian Dees wrote:

But, as you said, that poll was unofficial, only included 500 people,
and if I remember correctly had some very confusing options at first.


My guess is that more than 10.000 people have been informed of the poll 
(via the lists I mentioned). The fact that only 500 decided to state 
their opinion can hardly be counted against the poll. Why do we need 
official?



This sounds an awful lot like what happened, but instead of
offering a Yes/No at the end we only have the option of Yes I agree
to the new license/No, and I realize I can't edit the map anymore. We
seem to have skipped the crucial middle step.


I'm pretty sure that we would have a ton of people complain that Yes/No 
is not ok, they also want to be able to say Yes but only if X, No 
unless Y, or something. And what would the question have been? Yes I 
agree to the new license / no I accept that anyone can rip off our data 
because it is unprotected, maybe?



For example, in my student government
groups if someone wanted to change the constitution or institute a new
by-law they first had to come together with other people of a similar
persuasion, come up with a document that enumerated the changes, then
present it to the general assembly to be decided on with a vote. From my
point of view OSMF and LWG have come up with a proposal for change and
are immediately implementing it without querying anyone else.


I understand all of that. However, in many of these situations you have 
working status quo, and then someone wants to make a change, and they 
have to answer the question why make the change at all, what 
improvements does it bring, what's the reward?


We have a situation where those who have spent time with it, and talked 
to lawyers and all, are positively sure that we do not have a working 
status quo. Doing nothing is not an option. In licensing terms, this 
house is on fire. Day after day we're violating our own license and 
making promises that we cannot keep. Anyone who is *interested* in the 
matter can, and has, involve themselves in the process, read about 
reasons, participate in discussion, and so on. Anyone who is not 
interested has a right to be not interested, but they should not expect 
to be served the explanation on a silver platter, much less be asked: 
Do you think the house is on fire yes/no? - their input would not be 
helpful at all.


And this basic concept carries on further; in this issue everyone can 
have a say but it is not a democracy where the voice of someone who is 
totally un-informed counts as much as anyone else's. You have to get 
involved to be heard. And I don't think this is necessarily bad.


Bye
Frederik

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

2011-04-16 Thread Richard Bullock


I am also surprised that we are going to the compulsory re-licensing
when there are still (as far as I can tell without looking too closely)
doubts over the compatibility of significant datasources with the new
licence or contributor terms - From what I can tell from a few wiki
pages, it is not clear whether OS Opendata in the UK, or Nearmap in
Austrailia is compatible.   I would have expected these issues to be
resolved before forcing people to re-licence.


Isn't it funny how, just over a year ago, we couldn't care less about
anything the Ordnace Survey did, and suddenly we are a project that must
choose their license according to what is compatible with OS?


Probably because OS OpenData has been used fairly significantly by many folk 
in the UK since released. Without any sort of public indication otherwise 
from the LWG, it was difficult to believe that a new licence chosen wouldn't 
be compatible with data which appears to only require attribution.


Not that I agree with it, but OS StreetView has been used to map out entire 
towns in the UK 



___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

Frederik Ramm frederik at remote.org writes:

much less be asked: 
Do you think the house is on fire yes/no?

Please point to some real flames.

In all the time the licence discussions have been happening, nobody has 
mentioned
*one* *single* *case* where the licence of the map isn't respected and we are 
not
in a position to enforce it, but with the extra legalese in the ODbL we would 
be.

Since the situation is so serious, there should surely be plenty of examples
by now.

-- 
Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com


___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

2011-04-16 Thread 80n

On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 5:02 PM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote:
 We have a situation where those who have spent time with it, and talked to
 lawyers and all, are positively sure that we do not have a working status
 quo. Doing nothing is not an option.

And yet we've been doing nothing for several years now.  If the
picture was anything like as bad as you paint then we would have been
forced into action a long long time ago.

Show us the evidence please.

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

2011-04-16 Thread Kevin Peat

On 16 April 2011 17:00, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote:

 Isn't it funny how, just over a year ago, we couldn't care less about
 anything the Ordnace Survey did, and suddenly we are a project that must
 choose their license according to what is compatible with OS?

...

I say to you the same I said to Ian - even if OSMF would publish what
 mechanism they plan to use (and I'm pretty sure they don't have one yet),
 then that mechanism would not become part of the contract and it could be
 changed at any later time, say, after majorities in the OSMF board have
 changed after the next election or something.


No-one expects the OSMF/LWG to have all the answers worked out in advance
but surely someone can answer questions about what their intentions are.
Such as is it the LWG's intention to make the license/ct's compatible with
OS Opendata? If it isn't then all those people currently tracing thousands
of roads a week in the UK might as well take a break and get some fresh air.

After so many years, someone must surely have given at least a bit of
thought to how removing incompatible/un-relicensed contributions might be
handled? What's wrong with starting a thread with those ideas and letting
other people give their input?

I am quite prepared to trust people who I feel are being honest about their
intentions but the lack of information just gives the impression that
something underhand is in the works. I can imagine it would be easy for
those people who believe cc-by-sa doesn't apply to map data to justify
re-adding any deleted contributions on the basis that most of it is
effectively pd. I just think that would be a really bad idea as far as
maintaining any kind of community trust goes.

Kevin
___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

2011-04-16 Thread M∡rtin Koppenhoefer

2011/4/16 Kevin Peat ke...@kevinpeat.com:
 ... all those people currently tracing thousands
 of roads a week in the UK might as well take a break and get some fresh air.


fresh air is not the worst ingredient to OSMapping.

cheers,
Martin

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement


Hi,

On 04/16/2011 07:47 PM, Kevin Peat wrote:

Such as is it the LWG's intention to make the
license/ct's compatible with OS Opendata? If it isn't then all those
people currently tracing thousands of roads a week in the UK might as
well take a break and get some fresh air.


If people are indeed doing that then I would *definitely* suggest the 
fresh air option, no matter what we intend to do license-wise; see 
recent imports discussion on talk-gb (Adding a further 250,000 roads 
quickly using a Bot).



After so many years, someone must surely have given at least a bit of
thought to how removing incompatible/un-relicensed contributions might
be handled?


Yes, certainly. As a non-LWG-member but avid reader of legal talk, and 
someone who can add two and two together, I can say the following with 
some certainty:


* Data that has been created/modified only by people who agree to the 
license change will be kept unchanged. If someone should later complain 
nonetheless (e.g. I have created and not relicensed A road and B road, 
and this pub which is at the intersection is definitely a derived work, 
I demand it must be removed) then such data might be removed.


* A mechanism will be devised to determine the splitting and merging of 
ways and take that into account, i.e. if a way has been created by 
someone who doesn't agree, but later split in two by someone else, then 
methods will be found to make sure the partial way newly created by the 
split will not count as created/modified only by people who agree.


* Data that has been created/modified only by people who do not agree to 
the license change will not be kept in the new data base. If other data 
depends on this then that other data must be modified accordingly (e.g. 
a node might have to be removed from a way).


* There will be some mechanism to remind us that something is missing. 
It is totally unclear what form this will take; it might be a separate 
database that says whithin this rectangle, 10 streets have been 
removed (without saying what they are and where they were so as not to 
infringe the copyright of whoever did not relicense those streets), or 
it might be a note tag on a route relation saying as part of the 
license change, 5 members of this route had to be removed or so.


* There will be mechanism that show us these things *long before* the 
license change actually happens so that we have a chance to go there and 
resurvey the area, manually deleting the not-relicensed objects in that 
area. (In fact this is already starting to happen in some places in 
Germany, where the work of known objectors is being replaced by new 
data - premature action, I think, because people can still change their 
minds.)


* Data that has been created/modified by some people who do agree and 
others wo don't will have to be scrutinized. Some decisions can perhaps 
be made in an automated or semi-automated process; for example, assume 
that someone has removed the created_by tags of 100.000 nodes in one 
go - this is certainly not an act that warrants any copyright, so if 
that person is the only one in the history of the object to have not 
agreed then that will simply be ignored. Other cases will probably be 
more complex, and it is very likely that we will want to involve the 
community, i.e. there will be ways to flag objects with an unclear 
licensing status, there will be general guidelines issued by OSMF, and 
mappers will then be asked to decide for themselves wheter something can 
be copied or not (just like mappers today need to decide whether a 
source can be used or not). There will be likely some form of mechanism 
for recording such decisions, e.g. mapper name decided on date that 
this object can be relicensed in spite of its unclear licensing status 
for the following reason: ...


* It is likely that data from people who have explicitly said no I 
don't relicense will be treated differently from those who simply don't 
say anything. I could imagine - pure speculation on my part though! - a 
scene like this: The community in city X comes together and discusses 
prolific mapper Y, who hasn't been to the pub meet for the last year and 
hasn't made a decision regarding the license change. They don't know 
what happened to him but some mappers remember that he always said that 
he doesn't give a damn for intellectual property rights and he would 
prefer OSM to be PD. The mappers then decide to continue using his data 
in the relicensed database even though they don't have an explicit OK, 
knowing that if mapper Y should show up and say no they would have to 
remove his data later. This is a gamble that OSMF will certainly not 
make centrally but it might be possible locally.


* In general, just because an object has once in its history been 
touched by someone who doesn't agree to the new license doesn't mean it 
cannot be kept; just the information added in that one step cannot be kept.


When it comes not to individual mappers who

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement


Ed,

On 04/16/2011 06:58 PM, Ed Avis wrote:

Since the situation is so serious, there should surely be plenty of examples
by now.


It only takes *one* example to take all our data and feed it into some 
proprietary giant's database. Would you prefer to wait? Or even: If you 
were a member of the OSMF board entrusted with our data's safe keeping, 
would you prefer to wait? And then, when users complain, you'd say: Oh 
well, lawyers told me back in 2008 that this would happen but I figured 
I'd rather not upset the apple cart?


Bye
Frederik

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

Frederik Ramm writes:
  It only takes *one* example to take all our data and feed it into some 
  proprietary giant's database.

Worry about the license less and map more. The more we map, the more
value there is in participating in the community as a peer rather than
a parasite.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

2011-04-16 Thread Kevin Peat

On 16 April 2011 19:42, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote:

 If people are indeed doing that then I would *definitely* suggest the fresh
 air option, no matter what we intend to do license-wise; see recent imports
 discussion on talk-gb (Adding a further 250,000 roads quickly using a
 Bot).

 Over 2 ways were added in Britain in the last month (per ITO) and I
would think a fair proportion of these must be coming from the OS data.

...

 Most of what I wrote here hasn't been formally said by anyone in OSMF, but
 OSMF haven't fully thought this through either, and the above is simply the
 logical course to take given all the conditions and plans that *have* been
 discussed.


 Thanks for your thoughtful answer. It is certainly a lot more detailed than
anything I have read before. My first impression is how can a process with
so many grey areas possibly result in a cleanly licensed dataset?

Kevin
___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

Hi,

On 16 April 2011 10:29, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote:
 On 04/16/2011 02:05 AM, andrzej zaborowski wrote:
 At this point it's only known that there's an unspecified non-zero
 part of the community which wants OSM to switch license.  Not everyone
 needs to be true to that part of the community just like not everyone
 needs to be true to the part that wants OSM data in Public Domain or
 the part that drinks coffee with milk etc.

 Let us try and separate the issue of license change from the issue of the CT
 for a moment. Let us assume that there was no immediate license change
 planned; that OSMF intended to continue using CC-BY-SA for now; and that
 they only sought CT agreement from mappers, in order to make a potential
 future license change easier.

 The CT contain this clause whereby it becomes impossible to do what Dermot
 writes above - if 2/3 of mappers agree to use another free and open license,
 then that is the new license and everyone's data is changed to that new
 license.

 I think that *that* is the major change here,

Yes.

 and I have outlined in the
 past that I believe that you cannot be a part of a crowdsourced mapping
 effort if you consider your contribution to be only rented out to the
 project. If you want to participate in OSM, where all the time others will
 build upon your work, then you cannot sensibly say but if you decide to
 change your license later I might choose to take away my contribution. If
 you contribute to OSM, you pour a glass of water into an ocean. You cannot
 wrap that in plastic and label it yours. I made a comparison with
 voluntary work in real-life communities; if you have spent a lot of time and
 love helping to build a nice playground for the village school but later the
 whole school decides to adopt some pedadogic direction of which you don't
 approve and you put your kid elsewhere, you cannot tear town the playground.
 It wouldn't be right (and it would be very unlikely to make you happy).

 Now if someone says I'm willing to sign the CT on the condition that before
 OSMF switches to ODbL, they execute the exact license change procedure
 outlined in the CT, with asking 2/3 of active mappers etc., then this is
 something I can understand and respect.

 I do however have the impression that there are some people for whom calling
 for a public vote is just another means to delay and hopefully derail the
 process, and secretly they never intended to continue supporting the project
 after a license change anyway.

That's possible but unlikely.  There are some reasons why the vote
would have been rather useless (which have been outlined in this
thread) but they're not really obvious and that's why perhaps it's
hard to realise.


 I have a suggestion, one which we could implement in true crowdsourced
 spirit and without any OSMF involvement. We simply draw up a document that
 is basically a modified version of the current contributor terms, which says
 I am willing to make the following contract with OSMF on the additional
 condition of OSMF holding the 2/3 vote as described below before they change
 from ODbL to CC-BY-SA. We then devise some sort of sufficiently legally
 binding way for people to sign this document. Everyone who thinks that the
 CT are ok in principle but who would like a proper vote first, signs this
 document instead of the real CT.

But now you're talking about the license switch from CC-By-SA to ODbL
only and taking for granted that the switch from linux model to FSF
model is obviously good for the project.  Here are some reasons why
people might oppose that switch in the first place, and not because
they find it fun to troll mailing lists, but because they want the
project to succeed.  I'm personally quite ambivalent of ODbL and
CC-By-SA because the issues that decide which license would be better
for us, are so complex.

* The cost of switching is too high -- the community split, the
banning of a part of current mappers from mapping, the loss of data
that is already in our database.  It's simply quite late for the
switch with the little benefit that it brings.

* Under the new CTs (some versions of the document anyway... still
seems to be in flux), you may not be able to use (in OSM) data that
has been built on top of our OSM data by others.  For some of us this
means a failure of the share alike clause.  It's probably similar in
case of the FSF-hosted projects and mozilla/apache projects, but for
the majority of projects I know as free/open it would mean a failure.

* Other potential or real issues in the CTs, which is a contract
written by non-lawyers.  Mistakes have been found in both the CT and
the ODbL texts (and obviously in CC-By-SA text before that) after they
started to be in use.

* People in the status quo fork group are convinced that the current
model with no CTs and the CC-By-SA is good enough.  Taking the village
school playground example, it's not like they are saying the current
way of teaching is the only

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

2011-04-16 Thread Graham Jones

So hard to know which message to reply to in this very long chain.   I'll
try to pick out the main points in response to my message:

*Ordnance Survey Open Data*:  As far as I am aware our current licence etc
is compatible with the OS licence, so by changing ours, we are making a
conscious decision to move to a licence which *may* not be compatible with
OS's.   I understood from last time I asked about this that we were getting
some legal advice on it, but I have not seen a response.
As someone (Kevin I think) said, there are large chunks of the UK that
appear to have been traced from this data, so deleting it would be quite a
backwards step, and I would not support a course of action that would mean
deleting that data.
[The minor point about 'us' not being interested in what OS did a year ago
is not true for me - I, like several OSM people contributed to the
government consultation that resulted in the release of the data]

*Process*:  In my day job, if I want to implement a project I have to go
through a process with decision gates between stages - concept, development,
implementation etc.   In this process it feels like we are at the gate
between the development and implementation stages, but it is not at all
clear to me how we will make the decision that the damage to the dataset is
worth the benefit of the new licence.  [I accept that it may not be 'we' the
whole community that makes the final decision - it may be the LWG or the
OSMF board, I don't know].

It feels to me that the 'accept' button is my last hold on the process.   It
is not that I do not trust whoever is going to make the decision, but I do
not know who will make the decision, or what principles they will use to
make it.   If I knew this (especially the tolerance to data loss), I would
be happy to accept.   I am disappointed that we have got to this stage
without having such things specified.

I get the impression that most people responding to these queries are not
members of the LWG or OSMF board (my apologies if I am wrong) - a response
from people who are actually running the process, rather than well meaning
people who are not directly involved would be appreciated.

Regards


Graham.

On 16 April 2011 19:42, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote:

 Hi,


 On 04/16/2011 07:47 PM, Kevin Peat wrote:

 Such as is it the LWG's intention to make the
 license/ct's compatible with OS Opendata? If it isn't then all those
 people currently tracing thousands of roads a week in the UK might as
 well take a break and get some fresh air.


 If people are indeed doing that then I would *definitely* suggest the fresh
 air option, no matter what we intend to do license-wise; see recent imports
 discussion on talk-gb (Adding a further 250,000 roads quickly using a
 Bot).


  After so many years, someone must surely have given at least a bit of
 thought to how removing incompatible/un-relicensed contributions might
 be handled?


 Yes, certainly. As a non-LWG-member but avid reader of legal talk, and
 someone who can add two and two together, I can say the following with some
 certainty:

 * Data that has been created/modified only by people who agree to the
 license change will be kept unchanged. If someone should later complain
 nonetheless (e.g. I have created and not relicensed A road and B road, and
 this pub which is at the intersection is definitely a derived work, I demand
 it must be removed) then such data might be removed.

 * A mechanism will be devised to determine the splitting and merging of
 ways and take that into account, i.e. if a way has been created by someone
 who doesn't agree, but later split in two by someone else, then methods will
 be found to make sure the partial way newly created by the split will not
 count as created/modified only by people who agree.

 * Data that has been created/modified only by people who do not agree to
 the license change will not be kept in the new data base. If other data
 depends on this then that other data must be modified accordingly (e.g. a
 node might have to be removed from a way).

 * There will be some mechanism to remind us that something is missing. It
 is totally unclear what form this will take; it might be a separate database
 that says whithin this rectangle, 10 streets have been removed (without
 saying what they are and where they were so as not to infringe the copyright
 of whoever did not relicense those streets), or it might be a note tag on
 a route relation saying as part of the license change, 5 members of this
 route had to be removed or so.

 * There will be mechanism that show us these things *long before* the
 license change actually happens so that we have a chance to go there and
 resurvey the area, manually deleting the not-relicensed objects in that
 area. (In fact this is already starting to happen in some places in Germany,
 where the work of known objectors is being replaced by new data -
 premature action, I think, because people can still change their

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

Frederik, do you mean to say that after all these years of the project you
haven't seen a single example of any company - large or small - taking the OSM
data and being legally untouchable?

Might it not be possible, given that there are many firms with more than capable
legal departments, who are more than capable of taking advantage of such a
loophole, that there is slightly more to it than the simple mantra of 'our
licence does not apply'?

-- 
Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com


___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

Sorry my last message was a bit intemperate.

What I should have asked was this: if you still believe that some big firm can
'rip off' the OSM map data with impunity, despite the fact that this
conspicuously has not happened (the opposite in fact - our licence is 
universally
respected among large map data players) - then what, exactly, would persuade you
that this isn't a realistic possibility?

In other words, is your belief falsifiable in any way?

-- 
Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com


___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

Kevin Peat kevin at kevinpeat.com writes:

My first impression is how can a process with so many grey areas possibly 
result
in a cleanly licensed dataset?

I doubt that it can.  This is one additional reason to continue offering the old
licence as a dual-licence option.  Those users of the map who are a bit legally
paranoid and want to be certain that no contributor can complain, can continue
to use CC-BY-SA.  (There is of course the problem of plagiarized data, as now.)
Those who are a bit more adventurous and don't mind the grey areas relating to
object history and what derives from what, can make use of the new things the
ODbL provides, such as the ability to make map tiles and distribute them under
whatever licence you want without having to give attribution.

-- 
Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com


___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

2011-04-16 Thread Tobias Knerr

Ed Avis wrote:
 Might it not be possible, given that there are many firms with more than 
 capable
 legal departments, who are more than capable of taking advantage of such a
 loophole, that there is slightly more to it than the simple mantra of 'our
 licence does not apply'?

Yes, there is more to it: Our data isn't consistently better than that
of any of the big map providers.

In addition, the risk is still rather high that a license change would
happen soon after such an incident, and the dataset under the old
license would quickly become outdated.

So any reasonably intelligent evil company™ would wait until there is
more data up for grabs, and until it has become so hard for us to change
our license that we cannot even do so in order to defend against obvious
abuse.

Or, of course, our license and/or concerns about bad publicity are
actually sufficient to protect our data. But the lack of incidents
until now doesn't really tell us whether that's the case.

Tobias Knerr

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement


Hi,

On 04/16/2011 09:21 PM, Kevin Peat wrote:

Thanks for your thoughtful answer. It is certainly a lot more detailed
than anything I have read before. My first impression is how can a
process with so many grey areas possibly result in a cleanly licensed
dataset?


I assume that decisions will only be made globally where things are 
crystal clear, or where lawyers have been consulted beforehand (e.g. in 
my created_by does not count as creative enough to warrant copyright 
example).


Regarding all other cases: In OSM we must *always* rely on our community 
when it comes to the question of whether our dataset is cleanly licensed 
or not. The laws of probability dictate that a certain amount of our 
data will always be not-cleanly-licensed, today as well as at any time 
in the future. Today, users can use a copyrighted map to enter data even 
though we tell them not to, and the license change will not make that go 
away. When, in the course of the license change, community members are 
asked to judge if a certain object meets the criteria for inclusion, 
they can lie, or err, just as they can with respect to their sources 
today. We can take measures to reduce that risk, we can educate them, we 
can advise caution, but we can never eliminate the risk.


Because we cannot avoid the occasional mistake in licensing, we have to 
be responsive if someone claims that their rights have been violated; we 
have to investigate, respect their rights, and delete the infringing 
data if the claim is legitimate. This has happened a number of times in 
the past and will certainly continue to happen.


I don't expect the license change to change the size or amount of such 
problems, but if they arise they can be fixed.


Bye
Frederik

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement


Hi,

On 04/16/2011 10:35 PM, Ed Avis wrote:

what, exactly, would persuade you
that this isn't a realistic possibility?


I would like a big player with a big legal department - say, for 
example, Navteq - grabbing our data for a reasonably well mapped place, 
perhaps a city only, incorporating it into their data set in way that it 
either obvious (i.e. we can easily prove that they did it), or maybe 
they even admit it. Then I would like someone who has contributed data 
in that area to sue them, and I would like the lawsuit to have an 
outcome that hurts the big player (e.g. either that they have to pay a 
lot of money or that they have to release all their data or all their 
customers who used that data have to release whatever they built on top 
or something).


And preferably I would like all this to take place in a non-European 
country with a reasonably well developed rule of law, e.g. the USA.


If that happened, then I would be convinced that our data was indeed 
well protected by CC-BY-SA. It would still not be great (because it 
takes an individual to sue, and OSMF can't) but it would be sufficient.


Bye
Frederik


___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

Frederik Ramm frederik at remote.org writes:

I would like a big player with a big legal department - say, for 
example, Navteq - grabbing our data for a reasonably well mapped place, 
perhaps a city only, incorporating it into their data set in way that it 
either obvious (i.e. we can easily prove that they did it), or maybe 
they even admit it. Then I would like someone who has contributed data 
in that area to sue them, and I would like the lawsuit to have an 
outcome that hurts the big player

Hmm... so the fact that such grabbing of data has never occurred does not count
as evidence for you.  This is problematic, since in general things only go to
court if the legal status is questionable.  If it's reasonably certain, the side
that's in the wrong will back down long before then.  For example, I don't think
the GNU GPL has ever gone to court.

There are however plenty of test cases involving copying of maps and map data,
including in the United States.  As I understand it these broadly support
copyrightability of maps, although the case law for something like a phone
directory is quite different.  Anyway, we've been over that before.

-- 
Ed Avis e...@wanisset.com


___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

2011-04-16 Thread Tom Hughes


On 16/04/11 22:37, Ed Avis wrote:


Hmm... so the fact that such grabbing of data has never occurred does not count
as evidence for you.  This is problematic, since in general things only go to
court if the legal status is questionable.  If it's reasonably certain, the side
that's in the wrong will back down long before then.  For example, I don't think
the GNU GPL has ever gone to court.


Then you think wrong:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gpl#The_GPL_in_court

Tom

--
Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu)
http://compton.nu/

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

On 16 April 2011 23:37, Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com wrote:
 Frederik Ramm frederik at remote.org writes:

I would like a big player with a big legal department - say, for
example, Navteq - grabbing our data for a reasonably well mapped place,
perhaps a city only, incorporating it into their data set in way that it
either obvious (i.e. we can easily prove that they did it), or maybe
they even admit it. Then I would like someone who has contributed data
in that area to sue them, and I would like the lawsuit to have an
outcome that hurts the big player

 Hmm... so the fact that such grabbing of data has never occurred does not 
 count
 as evidence for you.  This is problematic, since in general things only go to
 court if the legal status is questionable.  If it's reasonably certain, the 
 side
 that's in the wrong will back down long before then.  For example, I don't 
 think
 the GNU GPL has ever gone to court.

Yes it has.  Harald Welte's gpl-violations.org has hundreds of cases
resolved successfully either in court or outside, including some very
big software and hardware companies.

Cheers

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

2011-04-16 Thread 80n

On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 7:47 PM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote:
 Ed,

 On 04/16/2011 06:58 PM, Ed Avis wrote:

 Since the situation is so serious, there should surely be plenty of
 examples
 by now.

 It only takes *one* example to take all our data and feed it into some
 proprietary giant's database. Would you prefer to wait? Or even: If you were
 a member of the OSMF board entrusted with our data's safe keeping, would you
 prefer to wait? And then, when users complain, you'd say: Oh well, lawyers
 told me back in 2008 that this would happen but I figured I'd rather not
 upset the apple cart?

Show us just one example then please.

We've been waiting for this predicted catastrophe for several years
now.  It hasn't happened.  The only thing that has happened so far is
that the license change process has been so protracted that it has
damaged OSM much more than any imagined threat could possibly have
done.

Wake up Frederik.

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

2011-04-16 Thread 80n

On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 10:25 PM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote:
 I would like a big player with a big legal department - say, for example,
 Navteq - grabbing our data for a reasonably well mapped place, perhaps a
 city only, incorporating it into their data set in way that it either
 obvious (i.e. we can easily prove that they did it), or maybe they even
 admit it.

We've waited five years for this to happen.  CC-BY-SA licensed data is
clearly not very attractive to these people.  Perhaps the quality of
the data is not good enough for them?  Or perhaps they realise that it
would be a net loss for them to infringe copyright.

Then I would like someone who has contributed data in that area to
 sue them, and I would like the lawsuit to have an outcome that hurts the big
 player (e.g. either that they have to pay a lot of money or that they have
 to release all their data or all their customers who used that data have to
 release whatever they built on top or something).

So far any copyright infringer has backed down gracefully rather than
risk it.  If the took legal advice then they were presumably advised
that it was wasn't a good bet.

Do you think that Google haven't considered the possibilty of
incorporating OSM data into their MapMaker database?  Why do you think
they haven't?  Perhaps our data is not good enough for them?  Or
perhaps, legally, they don't think they have the right?

There is zero chance that any large organisation would try to use
OSM's CC-BY-SA licensed map data and think that they would get away
with it.

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

Frederik Ramm writes:
  On 04/16/2011 10:35 PM, Ed Avis wrote:
   what, exactly, would persuade you
   that this isn't a realistic possibility?
  
  I would like a big player with a big legal department - say, for 
  example, Navteq - grabbing our data for a reasonably well mapped place, 

I suggest that that hasn't happened because it won't happen because
they're in the same boat as we are, and it isn't sensible to start
drilling holes in OSM's side of the board. Or as Ed suggests, maybe
their big legal department knows something you don't know?

To misquote Jesse Vincent (of Best Practical and thus RT fame):

 Shut The Fuck Up and Make Some Maps.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mn_francis/917796606/

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

80n writes:
  The only thing that has happened so far is
  that the license change process has been so protracted that it has
  damaged OSM much more than any imagined threat could possibly have
  done.

Here, here! If anybody is SO bored that fiddling with the license
seems like fun, come edit with me: Wayne, Livingston, Tioga, and
Orleans counties in New York State (bad TIGER digi). Armchair mapping
FTW, license fiddling FTL.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

2011-04-16 Thread Grant Slater

On 16 April 2011 23:36, 80n 80n...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 10:25 PM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote:
 I would like a big player with a big legal department - say, for example,
 Navteq - grabbing our data for a reasonably well mapped place, perhaps a
 city only, incorporating it into their data set in way that it either
 obvious (i.e. we can easily prove that they did it), or maybe they even
 admit it.

 We've waited five years for this to happen.  CC-BY-SA licensed data is
 clearly not very attractive to these people.  Perhaps the quality of
 the data is not good enough for them?  Or perhaps they realise that it
 would be a net loss for them to infringe copyright.


If this is what you have been complaining about then you have half
missed the point.
There are people who have chosen NOT TO USE OSM because of legal
ambigutity and points in the CC-BY-SA license which we (some?) in the
community chose to ignore.

Good read and background: Facilitating Collaboration On Geospatial
Data Using Social and Legal Norms -
http://www.nyls.edu/user_files/1/3/4/30/58/1134/DatabaseLicensing_110207.pdf

Regards
 Grant

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

On Sat, 16 Apr 2011 18:02:16 +0200
Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote:

 We have a situation where those who have spent time with it, and
 talked to lawyers and all, are positively sure that we do not have a
 working status quo. Doing nothing is not an option. In licensing
 terms, this house is on fire. Day after day we're violating our own
 license and making promises that we cannot keep.

Can you swap the flowery language for facts?

Please give examples.

I assure you, that my government has chosen CC licences for the release
of its own data, and that they can spend far more on lawyers than OSMF
ever will. I cannot believe that the house is on fire.

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

On Sat, 16 Apr 2011 11:20:27 -0400
Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote:

 I think Frederick gave you the best answer possible. It's not that the
 community was *asked* by some overarching committee, but instead that
 it just floated up. Like a turd in the toilet. Frankly, I never
 thought it would come to actually deleting data. I always thought that
 that was OBVIOUSLY so insane that *somebody* would have killed the
 idea of relicensing.
 
 The trouble is, is that, just as no one person is responsible for
 creating the idea, no one person has the ability to kill it. Maybe
 SteveC, but he's convinced that Google is going to steal our data. As
 if our data had any value once separated from the community that keeps
 it alive.
 -russ


One of my questions, waiting a very long time for an answer, is
What are the instructions of the OSMF Board to the Licensing Working
Group 
A corporate structure sets up committees. The Board gives the
committee a set of instructions. The committees are answerable to the
Board. 
Now was the instruction find out if we need a new licence, and if so
look around for one or was it find a way to put the OSM data under
this new licence.
From there it will be quite evident exactly which group of persons made
this decision.

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

On Sat, 16 Apr 2011 23:50:03 +0100
Grant Slater openstreet...@firefishy.com wrote:

 If this is what you have been complaining about then you have half
 missed the point.
 There are people who have chosen NOT TO USE OSM because of legal
 ambigutity and points in the CC-BY-SA license which we (some?) in the
 community chose to ignore.

Thanks for that Grant.
Those people have a right to do so, and they are free to do so.
I'm glad you are not forcing people to use OSM.

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

2011-04-16 Thread Tobias Knerr

Russ Nelson wrote:
 Unless somebody has a theory under which there will be more mappers
 suing more users, the only rational conclusion can be that the license
 change will hurt OSM, and not help it at all.

I wonder why you believe that the only way a license change can possibly
help OSM is by allowing us to sue more users of our data.

Personally, I don't want to sue anyone. However, I want to unambiguously
have the right to publish an OSM based map that doesn't provide
attribution for every single mapper. I also consider improved
compatibility with other licenses for produced works a welcome benefit.
And I'm almost certain that the legal and social environment in which we
operate will change during the next decades, so it would be nice to be
able to react to them by modifying the terms under which we publish our
maps; preferably without losing orders of magnitudes more data than we
might now. Some also think that the shift of share-alike from works onto
data makes sense, and I think that they have good arguments for that
position.

Clearly, there are a lot of advantages provided by the CT+ODbL that have
nothing at all to do with legal action against our users.

Tobias Knerr

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

2011-04-16 Thread David Murn

On Sat, 2011-04-16 at 18:00 +0200, Frederik Ramm wrote:
 Hi,
 
 On 04/16/2011 05:40 PM, Graham Jones wrote:
 ... it is not clear whether OS Opendata in the UK, or Nearmap in
  Austrailia is compatible.   I would have expected these issues to be
  resolved before forcing people to re-licence.
 
 Isn't it funny how, just over a year ago, we couldn't care less about 
 anything the Ordnace Survey did, and suddenly we are a project that must 
 choose their license according to what is compatible with OS?

If OS used some obscure licence and someone suggested changing to it,
then youd get people asking the same thing.  The thing is, these
services arent using obscure licences, theyre using a very common one.
Becoming incompatible with CC-BY-SA doesnt just mean that you lose one
source, or two sources, it means that you lose compatibility with
hundreds.

 I say to you the same I said to Ian - even if OSMF would publish what 
 mechanism they plan to use (and I'm pretty sure they don't have one 
 yet), then that mechanism would not become part of the contract and it 
 could be changed at any later time, say, after majorities in the OSMF 
 board have changed after the next election or something.

Silly me.  Silly me for thinking that we here at OSM believed in the
meaning of the O in OSM.  Incase the OSMF board has forgotten, the O
means Open, it doesnt mean you can pick and choose what they choose to
allow the community to see.  Wouldnt this have been a good thing to
start planning, like, when it was first realised that it was needed?
We've been complaining about these issues for years, and people like
yourself have been telling dissenters to shut the hell up.  Now that the
time has come, the 'foundation' is only just realising the issues that
the rest of us raised years ago and are now chasing their tails trying
to setup these mechanisms in the space of a day or two rather than a
year or two.

 I'm sorry but I think you can either trust people to do the right thing 
 or not trust them, but nobody will give you a written statement (or if 
 they do it won't be worth much).

Isnt that a problem with contract law?  OSMF could give you a written
statement, which might be suitably legally compatible in 2 or 3
countries, but not in the rest of the world.  Compare this to the
current situation where the current licence is accepted around the
world, with 2 or 3 exceptions.  Wouldnt it be easier to resovle the
issues in those couple of countries where they exist, than to find a
contract which has to be worded properly (if thats even possible) to
comply with every user's nation's laws.

David



___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

Hi,

On 17 April 2011 01:22, Tobias Knerr o...@tobias-knerr.de wrote:
 Personally, I don't want to sue anyone. However, I want to unambiguously
 have the right to publish an OSM based map that doesn't provide
 attribution for every single mapper. I also consider improved
 compatibility with other licenses for produced works a welcome benefit.
 And I'm almost certain that the legal and social environment in which we
 operate will change during the next decades, so it would be nice to be
 able to react to them by modifying the terms under which we publish our
 maps; preferably without losing orders of magnitudes more data than we
 might now. Some also think that the shift of share-alike from works onto
 data makes sense, and I think that they have good arguments for that
 position.

It probably makes sense (although both things may be desired
sometimes).  But while the new license might allow new users to take
advantage of OSM it'll also take it away from some existing users
because ODbL is not compatible with CC-By-SA in either direction.  I
know a relatively big project that's currently using OSM data under
CC-By-SA and may be in a nasty surprise when they find OSM is no
longer suitable.

Cheers

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 2:57 AM, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote:
 Mike N writes:
      Even a proper reversion script will cause much collateral damage for
   the cases I'm aware of.

 The whole point behind having a license is to be able to sue people
 who violate it.

You've got it exactly backwards.  The whole point of having a free
license is to waive the right to sue people who follow it.

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 4:29 AM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote:
 The CT contain this clause whereby it becomes impossible to do what Dermot
 writes above - if 2/3 of mappers agree to use another free and open license,
 then that is the new license and everyone's data is changed to that new
 license.

That's not what the CT says.  The CT says that OSMF can use one or
more of the following licences.  If 2/3 of mappers agree to use
another free and open license, then OSMF can use that other license.
Or OSMF can choose not to use that other license.  Or OSMF can use
that other license *and* one or more of the explicitly listed
licenses.

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 6:36 PM, 80n 80n...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 10:25 PM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote:
 I would like a big player with a big legal department - say, for example,
 Navteq - grabbing our data for a reasonably well mapped place, perhaps a
 city only, incorporating it into their data set in way that it either
 obvious (i.e. we can easily prove that they did it), or maybe they even
 admit it.

 We've waited five years for this to happen.  CC-BY-SA licensed data is
 clearly not very attractive to these people.  Perhaps the quality of
 the data is not good enough for them?  Or perhaps they realise that it
 would be a net loss for them to infringe copyright.

Navteq would be in a lose-lose situation:

1) They lose the case, and have to release their data under CC-BY-SA.
2) They win the case, by successfully arguing that all data (including
theirs) is public domain.

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

Tobias Knerr writes:
  Russ Nelson wrote:
   Unless somebody has a theory under which there will be more mappers
   suing more users, the only rational conclusion can be that the license
   change will hurt OSM, and not help it at all.
  
  I wonder why you believe that the only way a license change can possibly
  help OSM is by allowing us to sue more users of our data.

A license is a threat to sue plus a list of reasons why you won't
that threat out.

  Personally, I don't want to sue anyone.

Then you should put the public domain notice into your Wiki page, so
that everyone knows that you won't sue them under any circumstances.
I'm not asking you to do anything that I haven't already done.

  However, I want to unambiguously have the right to publish an OSM
  based map that doesn't provide attribution for every single mapper.

Then let's add a permission to the CC-By-SA which says We won't sue if
you only attribute the project.

  I also consider improved compatibility with other licenses for
  produced works a welcome benefit.

Then let's add permissions to the CC-By-SA which say We won't sue if
you combine this work with other licenses. Here are the
characteristics of those license which we deem acceptable.

  And I'm almost certain that the legal and social environment in
  which we operate will change during the next decades, so it would
  be nice to be able to react to them by modifying the terms under
  which we publish our maps; preferably without losing orders of
  magnitudes more data than we might now.

Then let's add permissions to the CC-By-SA which say I also grant the
OSMF permission to grant further permissions.

  Some also think that the shift of share-alike from works onto data
  makes sense, and I think that they have good arguments for that
  position.
  
  Clearly, there are a lot of advantages provided by the CT+ODbL that have
  nothing at all to do with legal action against our users.

None of these are arguments for the CT+ODbL. They are arguments for
granting extra permissions to current licensees. The REAL purpose of
the CT+ODbL is to be a bigger stick with which we can beat up OSM
users.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 12:04 AM, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote:
 Tobias Knerr writes:
   Russ Nelson wrote:
    Unless somebody has a theory under which there will be more mappers
    suing more users, the only rational conclusion can be that the license
    change will hurt OSM, and not help it at all.
  
   I wonder why you believe that the only way a license change can possibly
   help OSM is by allowing us to sue more users of our data.

 A license is a threat to sue plus a list of reasons why you won't
 that threat out.

Where are you getting this from?

The verb license or grant licence means to give permission. The noun
license (American English) or licence (British English) refers to that
permission as well as to the document recording that permission.

A license is a permission, not a threat.

   Personally, I don't want to sue anyone.

 Then you should put the public domain notice into your Wiki page, so
 that everyone knows that you won't sue them under any circumstances.
 I'm not asking you to do anything that I haven't already done.

Even if you don't personally want to sue anyone, licensing under
CC-BY-SA still be better than PD in that it can help avoid you
yourself getting sued.

Personally, I don't want to sue anyone.  But I'd certainly be willing
to threaten to countersue someone who threatened to sue me.  Sort of a
mutual assured destruction strategy of lawsuit avoidance.

CC-BY-SA is the closest popular license to putting up a notice which
says I won't sue you, as long as you don't sue me or anyone else.
That's much better IMO than a notice which says I won't sue you no
matter what.

CC-SA (i.e. Sharealike 1.0,
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sa/1.0/) was even better in that
regard.  But unfortunately, it never caught on.

   However, I want to unambiguously have the right to publish an OSM
   based map that doesn't provide attribution for every single mapper.

 Then let's add a permission to the CC-By-SA which says We won't sue if
 you only attribute the project.

I'm not sure what this whole attribute the project stuff is about,
as CC-BY-SA 3.0 already contains provisions allowing you to only
attribute the project.

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement

On 17 April 2011 01:53, David Murn da...@incanberra.com.au wrote:
 On Sat, 2011-04-16 at 23:36 +0100, 80n wrote:
 Do you think that Google haven't considered the possibilty of
 incorporating OSM data into their MapMaker database?  Why do you think
 they haven't?  Perhaps our data is not good enough for them?  Or
 perhaps, legally, they don't think they have the right?

 I think the 'not good' enough argument pretty much hits the nail on the
 head.  As great as our data may be, any commercial entity probably has
 access to similar data, which they can probably get with some sort of
 quality assurance guarantee.  If google wants maps of a city/town/state,
 they just goto the government of the area and get it.  They know its
 complete, they know its accurate, they know if theres a problem with the
 data that theres only one source to contact.

That's not true everywhere, for example all of the places where google
enabled Map Maker.  It also must have not been true in Columbia where
the google map data supplier used OSM and Google had no concerns with
completness or quality guarantees.

Cheers

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap License Change Phase 3 Pre-Announcement