On 16/07/2010, at 9:26 AM, TimSC wrote: > I agree with Richard Weait: the community is more important than the data.
Definitely. It's not losing data during a relicensing that I'm worried about (that's annoying though), it's losing people, and the longer this high-rhetotic fighting goes on before an actual "do you re-license" question, the more people I think we will lose when it doesn't go their way. It sounds like a lot people turning from likely "not happy with the outcome, but will contribute anyway" type people to "screw you, I'll go fork my own project" people (and I'm heading fast toward the latter category), due to the constant mostly-pointless arguments. > Although, as Simon Ward said "Everyone has a say on whether their > contributions can be licensed under the new license.", I am uncomfortable > with the ODbL process and I resent not being polled before the license change > was decided. OSMF has gotten this far in the process without checking they > have a clear majority of contributors behind the process (and not just OSMF > members). How would you actually poll the contributors? The only way I could see it being done that satisfies everyone is in exactly the same way that the actual relicensing question is going to be asked, and that is a very heavyweight thing to do just for a "what do people feel" poll. If you like, the actual contributor decision is a poll with legal consequences. > Or conduct an inclusive poll of contributors and then make an informed > decision - which will add months to an already tortuous process. I don't think any poll will help at all - either it won't get many responses and people will question it, or it will and we may have a well tried the actual relicensing. > My dream scenario is OSMF polls contributors with unbiased supporting > documentation I don't possibly know how you'd produce unbiased supporting documentation for this. Aside from the boring legal bits actual lawyers tell you, all the stuff like "reason we are doing this" is going to have to be biased somehow. _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
