On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 13:05, James Livingston <li...@sunsetutopia.com> wrote: > On 14/07/2010, at 10:28 PM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote: >> 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 don't know if you'll get out of being English-only, since like it > or not it is the main working language of OSM (as with many open > projects on the Internet). Using any other language is probably > going to exclude even more people. I should have been clearer. The problem isn't that the communication happens in English, but that it's happening in real time over the telephone. My German is pretty basic, but I can follow everything on talk-de armed with Google Translate and dict.leo.org. However, I wouldn't be able to follow a real-time German teleconference. That applies to a lot of people that are involved in OpenStreetMap, and will increasingly apply as we attract more contributors outside of the US/European hacker community. As an example, during the live stream for SOTM's Q&A session in Girona someone in the audience interrupted Steve Coast and asked him (in broken English), to please speak slowly and enunciate carefully, because many in the audience couldn't understand spoken English at that pace. That person is a good example of someone interested in the project (at least interested enough to show up on SOTM), but would pretty much be naturally excluded from the current teleconference system. > One thing that I've seen done in other projects is rotate between > three meeting times eight hours apart. So for example one meeting > would be 1800 UTC, the next 0200 UTC and the next 1000 UTC. Maybe that would mitigate it, I don't know. But since we're all volunteers living on a spinning globe I think what should be answered first is whether these discussions really have to be synchronous. >>> 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. > I can't speak for them, but I would guess it's more inadvisable than > forbidden (with respect to licensing anyway). If you get advice > saying "we believe that sections A, B and C will hold up in court, > section D probably would, E should unless XYZ happens and we don't > know about F", then telling everyone that means anyone trying to get > around it knows about the potential holes you found. I hope security through obscurity like that isn't something we're actually relying on. It'd also be trivially found out by anyone else willing to pay lawyers of equal caliber. > Of course, people using the license will want to know about that kind of > thing, so it's a trade-off. > >> I.e. can the legal advice only be shared among people actually on the >> LWG conference call, and not all OSMF members? > Who can be on the call - LWG members, any OSMF member, or anyone > involved in the project? Actually, I can't even find how you get on > the LWG in the first place. I can't find that either. It'd be nice if the criteria for joining / application process was oneline somewhere. Maybe it is and I just haven't found it. _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
