Tom, You wrote: "No, but some of us are trying to work to achieve the best consensus possible within the existing project while others appear to be trying to fragment the project."
I don't think there has been a decision by any of us to "fork" OSM or to "fragment" the community. I believe there is a group of people interested in OSM that would like to discuss the ways we might incorporate (and preserve) public domain data into OSM. Although the idea of a separate (mirrored) software stack has been mentioned, no firm decision has been made by any group to move in this direction. I would personally oppose this approach because of the hostility it will generate from other OSM members. I think a scenario in which OSM uesrs can choose to upload there data to a public domain repository before feeding it to the main OSM database and subjecting it to a "viral" license will be very workable. There won't be any fork of OSM in this case, just a place where people like myself can go to get OSM data that is under the public domain. Let me explain why this is important: Let's say my comany is hired to build a GIS for a small irrigation district in Central California. I convince my boss that it would be great if we could collect our transportation data layer and contribute it to OSM. He agrees to let me do this. >From what I understand, under the new license, any dataset that we build in-house based on the geometry or tags of data in the transportation layer, which we choose to release to our client or other parties, would have to be released under a share-alike license. For obvious reasons this would not be possible. However, if I can instead upload my companies transportation data layer to a public domain repository before it goes into OSM, then I can use it to build whatever other layers I want, without having to worry about violating a share-alike clause in the OSM license. Some people may tell me that I could do this any ways, even if my data was subject to the new license, but based on the discussions I've read on this list I think it is a real gray area. Having a public domain repository takes away a great deal of the "share-alike violation" fears a company like mine would have. I'll take steps to set-up a mailing list that doesn't need to be supported by OSM in an official way, but I hope the OSM community will be more receptive to our idea of public domain data in the future. If there are concerns about the way such a repository might affect the growth of OSM, those that are interested in the idea should have an opportunity to address these fears and respond to them. The Sunburned Surveyor On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 11:33 AM, Tom Hughes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Nic Roets wrote: > >> Many OSM contributors indicated that they are interested in a PD >> alternative (Richard, Frederik, myself etc). I believe that having a PD >> database (subset) many have a few applications. Like showcasing OSM on >> website where a viral license will be an issue. Google Earth etc. > > None of which explains how, on a practical level, it is supposed to > work. As I understand it the PD database would operate in parallel and > people who wanted to would upload to both that and OSM but while that > can work for new objects I don't see how it can work where an existing > object is being edited. > > Not that I really care about how it works unless it is an official part > of OSM that I and the other admins are going to be expected to provide > resources for, which is where we came in with a request for resources to > be allocated to the project. > >> We all want to improve OSM data quantity and quality. We just haven't >> agreed on weather a viral license will help or hinder. Just like we >> haven't agreed on JOSM vs. Potlatch. > > No, but some of us are trying to work to achieve the best consensus > possible within the existing project while others appear to be trying to > fragment the project. > > Tom > > -- > Tom Hughes ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) > http://www.compton.nu/ > > _______________________________________________ > legal-talk mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk > _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
