On 8 June 2011 17:59, Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer <o...@amen-online.de> wrote:
> I am willing to grant the OSFM + 2/3 of the community the right to relicense > my contributions in the following ways: > * the current versions of the ODbL and/or of the CC-BY-SA, > * all past and future versions of the ODbL and/or of the CC-BY-SA, > * all licenses that follow the Share-Alike/Copyleft principle, and That's not a bad start - but if I play spot-the-missing-bit, it looks to me that you aren't prepared to trust 2/3 of the community to decide that (for reasons not yet forseen) a licence other than the two you list and which may not be copyleft/sharealike. The difficulty I see is what might happen under those unforseen circumstances. Let's take a fanciful (but not impossible) assumption that in 50 years, the various map data providers operating either free beer or speech policies (as of today that would include OSM for speech and Google for beer) have transformed the landscape to the extent that Navteq decides that map data is a commodity, that they too will give away what they have, will integrate the concept of Community into their data maintenance and otherwise try to out-OSM OSM. Now, keep in mind that this is a fanciful example, so let's not be sidetracked by whether we think they would ever do such a thing. The issue is that the OSM Community at that time would find themselves having to consider how OSM should fit in a world where this had happened. Let's further suppose that some users of geodata continued to find obstacles to using OSM, but seized on the opportunity to exploit this newly freed Navteq data which, let's just suppose, had been declared PD. Such a development might in fact prove to be a game-changer. The OSM Community might well find that, in a world where geodata is often PD, sharealike is the kiss of death for a project. It therefore seems important to equip The Community of the future to decide on all aspects of future licence policy, including a yes or no to sharealike. Your preference should a situation like this arise seems to be: > * all other licenses if I am contacted and do not object within 6 weeks. So in 50 years time (and I hope that we are both still alive to cast our vote at that time), each of us will get the chance to express ourselves on this important matter. My interpretation of your 6 week timeout is that, should you be unreachable, bored or dead, The Community is free to make the decision without you, and that's certainly an improvement over where we are today. But suppose you are reachable - suppose you consider the issue for a week and decide to say no, but a solid majority of mappers say yes. 50 years worth of the stuff you mapped and anything sitting on top of it (which I'm going to claim will, by then, have diluted your own stuff into insignificance) will have to be removed somehow. And that's just not fair. If your data gets contributed to a project where it will by definition be mixed with those of other mappers you have to accept that the decision-making process of what may be fairly done with the mixed data set must also be shared with those same mappers. We can talk about what percentage should constitute a strong majority. We can talk about how to prevent gerrymandering of the pool of eligible voters. But we shouldn't and mustn't talk about vetoes. Today every "old" mapper has a veto on changes of this sort. Your list above proposes to grant a one-time mandate to allow for a specific foreseen licence change deemed necessary. But it proposes to retain the veto. Not one of us is so important to OSM that he or she has the right to stand in the way of the accountable will of The Community. Dermot -- -------------------------------------- Igaühel on siin oma laul ja ma oma ei leiagi üles _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-t...@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk