Hello I've been kindly passed some translations of mails that have appeared here from German to English. I'm going to assume the translations are broadly correct.
The mails make a number of accusations about me and CloudMade, most of it familiar conspiracy theory stuff. First, CloudMade doesn't have the majority of OSMF members by a long way. I'm guessing it's approximately 10%. This is one of those things where I think we would be wrong either way - we'd be wrong to not be involved and all of our staff just ignore OSM and the OSMF and we're wrong to be involved. Do we tell them how to vote for anything? No of course not. Feel free to ask them. The best way to dilute this is to join OSMF and get involved. On the idea that I personally control all of OSMF and the LWG - this is very wrong. As you will see from the minutes of the LWG, first I haven't been attending them all lately, second I don't chair it, Mike Collinson does. On the idea that I should be pushed off my high horse, I don't own a horse and it's my fiance who likes horses, not me :-) On the idea that the LWG has been ignoring critiscm... This is clearly false. The LWG has been listening for years, has had open minutes, has actively participated on all the mailing lists it can, but mainly for obvious reasons legal-talk. Finally please understand that *whatever* the LWG does it will be criticised for it. A license change process is long and hard and thankless. Even if it did everything perfectly for one set of people, OSM is a broad huge set of people with a lot of opinions and it's simply impossible to make everyone happy at the same time - just look at any tagging debate! Yours &c. Steve http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-de/2009-December/059883.html Ulf Lamping wrote: > i came to the conclusion, that the new ODBL licence is not able to solve the > problems at hand, but instead is causing a lot of new ones. I can only > comment on the way that the licence is going to be pushed through with a > shake of the head. I share your view. I find it scandalous, that the commercial company CloudeMade is now claiming all the data for itself. I think it is about time, that the project itself is voting on some administrators to take leadership. Who by the way authorised CloudMade to take such far-reaching decisions? I'm afraid, Steve has gone far beyond his duty and some are going to vote against the new licence just out of protest. The text of that survey [the doodle one] is making me sad and angry at the same time. Furthermore, there is a lot of justified critic about the new licence, which apparently is deliberately ignored by the OSM regime. I hope, that more active people will resist to that licence, so it can not be pushed through. CloudeMade with their leader Steve should be pushed off the the high horse they are currently sitting on. I don't want to break loose a revolution, but the behaviour of that company is going to far lately. Enough reasons have been stated against that licence already. bye André http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-de/2009-December/059907.html Frederik Ramm wrote: > What gives you the impression, that the new licence is a decision of > CloudeMade? It is still a fact, that a majority of OSMF's members are employed by CloudeMade. Furthermore, the [OSMF] chairman is the boss of that commercial enterprise. Personally, i find that the worst possible combination. bye André http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-de/2009-December/059909.html I simply have a problem with SteveC being on the board of directors and AT THE SAME TIME having a firm that wants to make money with OSM. I demand, that such a person is voluntarily waiving the post because of the obvious conflict of interest. For me, the present situation is a clear breach of the principle of the division of powers. How can a person take objective decisions on the fate of the project, if his own livelihood is depending on it? A clear conflict is evolving at that point: "What's best for me?" / "What's best for the project?" Everybody (mankind is selfish) would go for the first option. I clearly remember the beginning of the ODbL -- at that time SteveC was having a leading role. He even wrote some personal mails to this list, some in a very unfriendly manner. All of his employees are mandatory members of the OSMF. I clearly see, that SteveC is trying to manipulate the decisions of the OSMF by bending his employees in a way that they have to adopt to their boss' will. You might want to call that conspiracy theory, but i have the justified fear, that the main focus of the new licence is to improve the situation of CloudeMade -- on the expanse of our painstakingly collected data. Furthermore, i find the tone of that survey beneath contempt. A survey has to be _NEUTRAL_ . If i went to ask 100 people: "Choose A, or you will be shot", i wouldn't be surprised if a majority choose A. In the preface of the survey it is clearly stated, that the data will be deleted of hidden (what is equivalent) , if one does not choose the ODbL. Out of fear that their data will be destroyed, many users will simply agree to the new licence without understanding it or seeing it's disadvantages. So i see a lot of sever mistakes that were done. The thing with the survey is not happening the first time by the way. On earlier surveys the option "i want to keep CC" also always had the addition "and my data shall be deleted". The persons responsible have been repeatedly criticised for that -- still nothing has improved and one has the feeling, that critic remains unheard deliberately in order to push through the ODbL by all means. please consider this, André _______________________________________________ Talk-de mailing list Talk-de@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-de
