> So ask for a clause that "ownership" is transferred to another org in > the event that OSMF is "bought out" or no longer has the best > interests of it's contributors, but it's not uncommon to assign rights > to an org, as you point out the FSF has been doing it for a long time, > why was there any reason to trust them in the begining? >
I assume that it was time when organizations like FSF sounded like hippy geeks without any serious possibility to penetrate market. Free software, free for all to use, sell, customize, analyze? Are you kiddin? Real intent of FSF and GNU only got serious coverage after Linux came in (because GNU fit so well as support layer of new os); at that point FSF already were serious players in community and have proven that they are "fanatic" enough not to sell out. To keep on believing in right thing takes some faith. OSM, in other case, have already attracted lot of commercial competition and there are worries about their markets - and in same time lot of casual map users too. Therefore, having one organization like target will make things a lot easier if someone will seriously try to silence this project. Also people aready seen signs, they seen Microsoft doing nothing about Netscape or Firefox - and loosing. No commercial vendor wants OSM to become "Linux of the maps" or "Firefox of the maps". Question is - can we trust OSMF? I can put up some faith for it, but how about others? That's why is so important to explain this license change again, again and again. Cheers, Peter. _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
