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
