I've split this from the original thread before it derails the one it was in any further, and cc'd legal-talk.
On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 10:57, Andy Allan <gravityst...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 11:22 AM, Frederik Ramm <frede...@remote.org> wrote: >> Hi, >> >> Ęvar Arnfjörš Bjarmason wrote: >>> >>> That doesn't just go for the LWG, it seems that a lot of the people >>> involved in the OSMF prefer to do things via conference calls. The >>> calls aren't recorded and published (that I've seen) >> >> Recording and making public such conversations would mean that everyone >> would have to choose their words carefully in order to minimise the danger >> of being quoted out-of-context by people with a limited understanding of >> English (wo might, for example, not immediately understand the humour in >> certain expressions). It would also discourage straight talk in many cases >> (people would say "someone has contacted me about this-and-that" instead of >> saying who that someone was, and so on). >> >> The telephone calls are already, as you say yourself, time-consuming and >> thus not for everybody; they are also, if I may add from my tiny little >> personal exposure, tedious and not something one likes to do. >> >> Your suggestions would make the telephone calls even more tedious, more time >> consuming, and rob them of the last bit of fun (in the form of a humourous >> remark here and there). It would be even harder to find people doing the >> work if you expect that from them. Well, my main suggestion was to not use conference calls due to the inherent bias towards people near UTC+0, and those that speak English at a near-native level. Which wouldn't be the case if the communication was in textual and asynchronous form. It's not something I care deeply about myself, since I probably wouldn't participate. But it's unfortunate that the people in a position to enact such a change would be those already active in the OSMF, i.e. people who've largely self-selected for doing things via conference call in the first place. I'm no expert on this sort of thing, but there are probably a lot of well known pitfalls to avoid when trying to run an inclusive international project in many languages. I'd think having English-only discussion at a set time convenient for Europeans would be pretty high on that list. > I'm not sure I've heard any of the LWG members have any fun whatsoever > on their calls! > > Further to what Frederik has said, there's a couple more points that > are important. The OSMF receives legal advice on matters relating to > the license change, and as far as I'm aware they are forbidden from > making the legal advice public. If I recall correctly there was a > problem about a year ago where the legal advice was publicly quoted > and it had to be redacted from the mailing lists. Such is the nature > of legal advice. > > I would also expect there to be lots of other confidential matters > discussed (such as contacting people external to the project) that > again can't be publicly broadcast without heavy editing of any > recording. I'm sure the Data Working Group also has similar problems > of confidentiality when there are copyright accusations being dealt > with - some things just can't be recorded and broadcast publicly. That's fair enough. But since the legal advice and confidential information is being given to the OSMF, is there anything preventing these from being recorded and distributed amongst paying OSMF members, and not members of the general public? I.e. can the legal advice only be shared among people actually on the LWG conference call, and not all OSMF members? And would it be possible to offer podcasts of working group conference calls that aren't (presumably) legally sensitive, like the SOTM group, Local Chapters, Strategy, Sysadmins etc.? (from http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Working_Groups) > I'm sure if there are specific things from the minutes that you'd like > elaboration on, the LWG members will do their best to try to answer > your questions. I think the LWG should be applauded for providing such > up-to-date minutes for all of their regular meetings, it shows some > insight into their dedication to doing things well. Well, since you mention it I proposed a human readable version of the contributor terms in May [1] which the LWG rewrote [2]. A mention of it in the minutes last appeared on 2010-06-22 [3] as - Summary of OpenStreetMap Contributor Terms http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/Contributor_Terms_Summary Mike has removed "This is a work in progress". Presumably that means they're ready for rollout, but I don't know. I have a patch to the website that's been sitting around for two months waiting for a LWG yay/nay on this. Now, I *don't* mean that as "waa waa, they took two months to look at my issue". I understand that this is low priority and that Mike et al are busy with other stuff. What I think is unfortunate is that stuff like this which seemingly has no need for confidentiality is intermingled with stuff that does. So if I want to follow its progress I have to poke the right people about status updates. As opposed to just following a mailing list like I can do if I want to work on human readable legal matters for Debian, Wikimedia, or almost any other open source or free data project. Anyway, since you asked "What could we (you/me/LWG) do to make this more inclusive?" here's a couple of specific suggestions, ordered from easy to hard: * Post the minutes on the mailing lists / OpenStreetMap blog (in plain-text format, so they can be quoted in subsequent replies) I think there are probably, as you say, specific things from the minutes people might want elaborations on. But answers to such inquiries should be on a public list, since they aren't confidential, and the answers could be useful to more people than just the person asking the question. It seems that a lot of discussion on OSM-Talk is of the form: 1. [OFF LIST] LWG does something / decides something 2. Time passes 3. People find out about it 4. OMG WTF BBQ discussion ensues It'd be nice if communication with the LWG was more immediate, so we could go directly from 1->4, perhaps without the "OMG WTF BBQ" part :) The minutes could be posted on OSM-legal-talk, but it's probably fine (and desired, given the importance) to cross-post it to OSM-Talk too. A weekly post about minutes on OSM-Talk is more on-topic than tagging discussion of the week #47. * Split off LWG discussion that doesn't need to be confidential to a public forum. There's already a legal mailing list, why can't it be used for mundane discussions like the human readable terms? 1. http://www.mail-archive.com/talk@openstreetmap.org/msg29466.html 2. http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/Contributor_Terms_Summary 3. http://docs.google.com/View?id=dd9g3qjp_70dwdsgnc5 _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
