Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Cut-over and critical mass
On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 1:32 PM, 80n 80n...@gmail.com wrote: The problem is there's no time limit either. The process can be allowed to drag on for another 5 years if necessary. All the time that there is uncertaintly about the license it is harming the project. Deterring potential contributors and confusing prospective users. How much longer should this be allowed to continue? Hi Etienne, Mulling over your post from yesterday, I was wondering if you could suggest a timescale that would make you feel more comfortable about the process? What changes could be made to reduce the uncertainty? There is also the existing timetable at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Database_License/Implementation_Plan Cheers, Andy ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Cut-over and critical mass
On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 8:25 PM, M∡rtin Koppenhoefer dieterdre...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/7/13 Kai Krueger kakrue...@gmail.com: If Richard's statement relayed through Frederik of that at least 90% of data is an absolute minimum becomes binding, (which would still leave a huge amount of room for wiggeling, after all 10% of data would be still 1 1/2 entire Germanys, or nearly all of Europe), much of that fear would likely go away. That's a good point: will TIGER, AND and other imports count as contributions / share of the data? If they do 90% is not much. If we talk about honest manual mapping contributions it is quite satisfactory on the other hand. I'm not sure whether such a decision has been made already, but obviously the conversation will be easier to have *after* people have decided on relicensing. Perhaps it illustrates why the LWG don't want to say something arbitrary like 95% of the data since it does make a difference which different parts of the data are affected. Cheers, Andy ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Cut-over and critical mass
On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 5:18 PM, Kai Krueger kakrue...@gmail.com wrote: I don't see a definition (or an attempt of one, or an order of magnitude suggestion) of critical mass in that document (or any of the others). So how is this detailed with respect to this point? If anyone can point me to something concrete of what is or is not acceptable for a changeover criterion, I'd be more than happy. I don't think there's any definition of critical mass, and from what the LWG were saying at the panel discussion at SOTM I think that's deliberate and clearly something they've discussed themselves quite thoroughly. However, I'd be interested in hearing what you think. Could you put some numbers on what would make you feel comfortable? I've tried such an exercise myself (and came to the same conclusions as the LWG in the end) but that doesn't stop you from having an answer, and it might help with constructive discussion here. Cheers, Andy ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Cut-over and critical mass
On 14 July 2010 19:25, Andy Allan gravityst...@gmail.com wrote: However, I'd be interested in hearing what you think. Could you put some numbers on what would make you feel comfortable? I've tried such an exercise myself (and came to the same conclusions as the LWG in the end) but that doesn't stop you from having an answer, and it might help with constructive discussion here. As you and others have pointed out, there is too many unknowns to make an informed decision, instead of combining a contributor vote with a change of license agreement, why not split this into 2 steps, ask users to indicate if they agree with the change and then at some point in future ask for contributors if they agree to actually change the license. This way we can do some proper modeling on how much data would be lost in various regions before actually committing to changing over. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Cut-over and critical mass
On Wed, 14 Jul 2010, Sam Larsen wrote: I feel imho that the LWG do represent the vast majority of mappers, care about the project, care about all the hard work that we all have put into this, have noted all the concerns that have been raised and will not make a decision that will cause too much damage to the project. This statement has as much basis in fact as my belief that neither the OSMF nor its LWG have decided on anything except changing the licence. I have asked for (a) the terms of reference of the LWG (not recently, late last year) and (b) some idea of what are the parameters which would give this change the go- ahead When these questions cannot be answered, especially (b) then I assume that no one knows. Next question Is the LWG or the OSMF Board going to make the decision on how many contributors/ how much data is needed to agree to change over to change to ODbL? (Is this question part of the LWG terms of reference, or not?) ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Cut-over and critical mass
On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 4:01 PM, Andy Allan gravityst...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 1:32 PM, 80n 80n...@gmail.com wrote: The problem is there's no time limit either. The process can be allowed to drag on for another 5 years if necessary. That's not quite true, and I think you know that. The OSMF isn't exactly likely to have this phase of the relicensing simply dragging on - to start suggesting that it would isn't helpful and is another fear of the fear of ODbL thing. All the time that there is uncertaintly about the license it is harming the project. Deterring potential contributors and confusing prospective users. How much longer should this be allowed to continue? I think allowed to continue is the wrong phrase. Perhaps what can I do to help speed things up? would be better. Maybe working on (more) documentation and outreach, or finding out what the holdup is with allowing existing contributors to choose to relicense and offering to help with that. I know I'm itching to be allowed to indicate my preference, and I know that there's already something like 30,000 newbies who have agreed already. The correct way to re-license a project is to fork it. But the proponents of the ODbL don't have the courage to do that. Instead they are trying to do it by attrition. First they give newbies no choice. Eventually, they hope, the number of newbies and new content will be overwhelming. If they had any guts they'd have forked the project. And they don't have the guts to put it to a straight vote either. With no deadline there's never a point at which anyone can say they failed. How much time is needed? Everything is in place, the LWG has had several years to prepare. If there isn't a clear majority by September 1st then I'd say the relicensing has failed. 80n ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Cut-over and critical mass
On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 12:12 PM, 80n 80n...@gmail.com wrote: The correct way to re-license a project is to fork it. I whole-heartedly disagree. Do you think that wikipedia should have forked for their relicensing? Or Mozilla? They managed to find ways to achieve relicensing without the massive upheaval of starting a new project - instead they brought everyone along with them and built on their success. Forking is what happens to projects when they fail, and I don't believe anyone here wants OpenStreetMap to fail. But the proponents of the ODbL don't have the courage to do that. Instead they are trying to do it by attrition. First they give newbies no choice. Eventually, they hope, the number of newbies and new content will be overwhelming. Interesting accusation. Are you accusing all ODbL proponents of having this plan? Or just the LWG? Or do you care to name anyone in particular? Because otherwise your accusations aren't very constructive. If they had any guts they'd have forked the project. And they don't have the guts to put it to a straight vote either. With no deadline there's never a point at which anyone can say they failed. How much time is needed? Everything is in place, the LWG has had several years to prepare. If there isn't a clear majority by September 1st then I'd say the relicensing has failed. Thanks, that is what I was asking. By clear majority do you mean a clear majority of respondents, or a clear majority of active contributors, or a clear majority of all contributors? And would you confirm what %age equates to a clear majority? Cheers, Andy ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
[OSM-legal-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?
I've split this from the original thread before it derails the one it was in any further, and cc'd legal-talk. On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 10:57, Andy Allan gravityst...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 11:22 AM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: Hi, Ęvar Arnfjörš Bjarmason wrote: That doesn't just go for the LWG, it seems that a lot of the people involved in the OSMF prefer to do things via conference calls. The calls aren't recorded and published (that I've seen) Recording and making public such conversations would mean that everyone would have to choose their words carefully in order to minimise the danger of being quoted out-of-context by people with a limited understanding of English (wo might, for example, not immediately understand the humour in certain expressions). It would also discourage straight talk in many cases (people would say someone has contacted me about this-and-that instead of saying who that someone was, and so on). The telephone calls are already, as you say yourself, time-consuming and thus not for everybody; they are also, if I may add from my tiny little personal exposure, tedious and not something one likes to do. Your suggestions would make the telephone calls even more tedious, more time consuming, and rob them of the last bit of fun (in the form of a humourous remark here and there). It would be even harder to find people doing the work if you expect that from them. Well, my main suggestion was to not use conference calls due to the inherent bias towards people near UTC+0, and those that speak English at a near-native level. Which wouldn't be the case if the communication was in textual and asynchronous form. It's not something I care deeply about myself, since I probably wouldn't participate. But it's unfortunate that the people in a position to enact such a change would be those already active in the OSMF, i.e. people who've largely self-selected for doing things via conference call in the first place. 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'm not sure I've heard any of the LWG members have any fun whatsoever on their calls! 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. If I recall correctly there was a problem about a year ago where the legal advice was publicly quoted and it had to be redacted from the mailing lists. Such is the nature of legal advice. I would also expect there to be lots of other confidential matters discussed (such as contacting people external to the project) that again can't be publicly broadcast without heavy editing of any recording. I'm sure the Data Working Group also has similar problems of confidentiality when there are copyright accusations being dealt with - some things just can't be recorded and broadcast publicly. That's fair enough. But since the legal advice and confidential information is being given to the OSMF, is there anything preventing these from being recorded and distributed amongst paying OSMF members, and not members of the general public? I.e. can the legal advice only be shared among people actually on the LWG conference call, and not all OSMF members? And would it be possible to offer podcasts of working group conference calls that aren't (presumably) legally sensitive, like the SOTM group, Local Chapters, Strategy, Sysadmins etc.? (from http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Working_Groups) I'm sure if there are specific things from the minutes that you'd like elaboration on, the LWG members will do their best to try to answer your questions. I think the LWG should be applauded for providing such up-to-date minutes for all of their regular meetings, it shows some insight into their dedication to doing things well. Well, since you mention it I proposed a human readable version of the contributor terms in May [1] which the LWG rewrote [2]. A mention of it in the minutes last appeared on 2010-06-22 [3] as - Summary of OpenStreetMap Contributor Terms http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/Contributor_Terms_Summary Mike has removed This is a work in progress. Presumably that means they're ready for rollout, but I don't know. I have a patch to the website that's been sitting around for two months waiting for a LWG yay/nay on this. Now, I *don't* mean that as waa waa, they took two months to look at my issue. I understand that this is low priority and that Mike et al are busy with other stuff. What I think is unfortunate is that stuff like this which seemingly has no need for confidentiality is intermingled with
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Cut-over and critical mass
On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 12:32 PM, Andy Allan gravityst...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 12:12 PM, 80n 80n...@gmail.com wrote: The correct way to re-license a project is to fork it. I whole-heartedly disagree. Do you think that wikipedia should have forked for their relicensing? Or Mozilla? They managed to find ways to achieve relicensing without the massive upheaval of starting a new project - instead they brought everyone along with them and built on their success. Forking is what happens to projects when they fail, and I don't believe anyone here wants OpenStreetMap to fail. I thought the whole reason for the relicensing was because CC-BY-SA was an epic fail. For five years people have been saying that OSM won't work because of the license. Well, Chicken Little, the sky has not fallen in, and last time I looked OSM was working pretty well. But the proponents of the ODbL don't have the courage to do that. Instead they are trying to do it by attrition. First they give newbies no choice. Eventually, they hope, the number of newbies and new content will be overwhelming. Interesting accusation. Are you accusing all ODbL proponents of having this plan? Or just the LWG? Or do you care to name anyone in particular? Because otherwise your accusations aren't very constructive. The minutes show that Steve Coast, Richard Fairhurst, Mike Collinson and Andy Robinson and me decided this on 20th March 2008. http://www.osmfoundation.org/images/e/e3/Osmf_boardminutes_20080320.pdf And yes, I understood the implications of this and all voted for it (it may even have been my idea). If they had any guts they'd have forked the project. And they don't have the guts to put it to a straight vote either. With no deadline there's never a point at which anyone can say they failed. How much time is needed? Everything is in place, the LWG has had several years to prepare. If there isn't a clear majority by September 1st then I'd say the relicensing has failed. Thanks, that is what I was asking. By clear majority do you mean a clear majority of respondents, or a clear majority of active contributors, or a clear majority of all contributors? And would you confirm what %age equates to a clear majority? I think it has to be factored by the size of contribution. The size of the resulting database should be the key determinant. However, this would be seriously skewed by TIGER and other imports. Perhaps bulk imports can be balanced by counting on both sides. So compare the volume of data that would be licensed under ODbL with the corresponding volume of data that would be licensed under CC-BY-SA. Then a simple largest wins criteria would work. 80n ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?
On 14 July 2010 14:05, James Livingston li...@sunsetutopia.com wrote: 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. You get on the mailing by asking the phone number and the time of the next conference call. Emilie Laffray ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] What could we do to make this licences discussion more inclusive?
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 QA 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. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
