Re: [OSM-legal-talk] I want my access back
Hi Henk, [Henk Hoff, 14.08.2011, 14:25]: If you talk about future license changes as defined in the CT: active contributors are defined as contributors who have edited the map in at least 3 different months (don't have to be consecutively) in the previous year. Exactly. So someone who has contributed for several years, but only during two months of the previous year, is not allowed to vote. Also, the sysadmins reserve the right to block the edits right of accounts (as they are currently doing). They decided not to give us assurances that our editing right will not be blocked again in the future, e.g. to enforced an update to the CT. This means that the right to vote is directly dependent upon the behaviour of the sysadmins. And some of them have made it very clear in emails to this list that they are against changing this. Olaf signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] I want my access back
[Henk Hoff, 14.08.2011, 19:00]: If contributing in 3 different months during the last year would be too much of a burden, are you then really involved? If the sysadmins block your account because they want to force through a future CT update that you deem problematic, then it is simply not possible to contribute in 3 different months. The situation would change dramatically if the sysadmins were to guarantee that they will never remove edit rights as they currently do. At least one sysadmin has stated on this list that the legal team should ignore my concern about the wording of the CT, claiming that the sysadmins will always act responsibly. At the same time, he said that the sysadmins are not responsible for the action of blocking my edit right because the legal team has asked them to do so. I interpret this to mean that no one is willing to act with responsibility, and that my concern is therefore valid. Olaf signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] I want my access back
[Robert Kaiser, 11.08.2011, 21:17]: Most of us always agreed that our data is the data of the OSM project as soon as we contributed it, and that the project will always be able to use it. Some disagree apparently and make the life of the project much harder. Unfortunately it is not „the OSM project“ that will decide what happens with the data in the future. Many contributors who are important parts of the project will not be allowed to vote on future license changes. The sysadmins even reserve the right to remove voting rights from people by blocking their edit rights. See the definition of „active contributor“ in the CT to understand why. Members of both the sysadmins and of the legal working group are aware of this, but they have clearly stated that they do not want this to change. Loosing a few contributors (and their data) is regarded as a minor problem. My opinion is that the project consists of all people that contribute to it, and that all contributors should be acknowledged for their work. Some influential people disagree obviously, and this make the life of the project much harder. OIaf signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] I want my access back
[Simon Poole, 12.08.2011, 11:29]: Your changes, as has been pointed out to you before, wouldn't have been backwards compatible with the initial CTs. And in reply, I pointed out how this problem could be solved. Just for the record: Both the wording of the CT and the behaviour of the sysadmins have disenfrachised me. I will never contribute to OpenStreetMap again (and not only because you are currently blocking my acount frpom contributing). Have you changed your mind (which I would consider quite legitimate) and do actually want to continue to contribute, or why are you even participating in this discussion? I responded to the Robert's implied claim that „the OSM project“ is identical with those that make decisions. I still consider myself very much a part of the project, even if I am unable to contribute. Olaf signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] CTs are not full copyright assignment
Hi Tom, Where do I find the sysadmin policy for evaluating whether a blocking request is considered „unreasonable“? There isn't one. I'm not entirely sure what it would say if it existed as it is hard to write such things down in concrete terms as it is by definition a very subjective judgement. Hm, some of the sysadmins claimed that the problems in the CT should not be fixed because the sysadmins would never be unreasonable. Now you tell me that you did not even come to a common understanding would the word reasonable should mean. My conclusion is that I should simply ignore this argument by the sysadmins. I have been repeatedly told that making the voting right dependent upon the edit right is not a problem and that the CT do not need to be fixed, because the sysadmin team will always be reasonable. At the same time, the same people tell me that it is entirely reasonable to block my edit right and to thus remove my voting right. I see a contradiction here. I (and several others) have explained the problem again and again. My problem is that the CTs seem, to me, to be making a reasonable effort to describe a workable way to determine who is an active contributor and all I've seen in response is ever more implausible scenarios which involve some large number of people collaborating maliciously over a long period of time to somehow subvert that definition. I do not assume malice. I simply assume that people do not care about the harm that their actions are doing to the community. If you have a better way of defining active contributor that is workable then please tell us what it is. I see no reason to limit the voting right to people who fit the definition of active contributors. I once made a constructive proposal for one potential way to fix the problem, which was met both with well-grounded criticism and with personal attacks. Hardly anyone of the people who criticised my suggestion have made any efforts to seriously work towards alternative solutions to the problem, and those who did were themselves ignored. What exactly was this constructive proposal? I have made two different proposals: 1. Enforce an agreement to the ODbL (and maybe to all other share-alike licenses), but ask again if a move to a non-share-alike license is planned in the future. Add a provision for non-responding people (i.e. opt-out rather than opt-in). 2. Do not make the voting right dependent upon actions of the sysadmins. Do not take away the voting right from people who once held it. Only allow to clean up the database of possible voters by removing non-responding people. There are also a number of other ways to fix the problem, but I see no point in spending a lot of time explaining and discussing if the OpenStreetMap teams with power (i.e. sysadmins and license WG) simply do not care. The license WG insist on not guaranteeing me a voting right. The sysadmins insist on blocking my edit right until I accept this. But I insist that this is no way to treat the mappers, who are the life of OpenStreetMap. Olaf ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] CTs are not full copyright assignment
Hi Kai, One could have given voting rights to all people who have once reached active contributor status and retain sufficient interest in the project to keep their email address up to date and respond to the vote within 3 weeks. I agree. However, Frederick is correct, that this kind of change to the CT (i.e. definitions of who is allowed to vote and how) is indeed very hard, as it would be incompatible with the current CT, as it is a global change rather than a change just effecting the local contributor. I see no problem here. The CT require both a positive vote in the OSMF and a 2/3 majority of a narrowly defined subgroup of the community. The new CT could require a positive vote in the OSMF and a 2/3 majority of the whole community. For a license change, we would then need a positive vote in the OSMF, a 2/3 majority of a narrowly defined subgroup of the community, and a 2/3 majority of the whole community. The new CT could require a positive vote in the OSMF and a 2/3 majority of the whole community. What could however be done without requiring to reask everyone to update to the latest CT, would be to include a sentence in that clause along the line that OSMF may only ban you from editing if there is clear indication of vandalism to the data or if other technical missuse can be shown. Thus political banning of people who don't agree with the OSMF will no longer be allowed and thus couldn't affect who is eligible for voting. Then one wouldn't need to rely on the sysadmins being reasonable and the sysadmins would not be in the awkward position of having to decide if OSMF is being reasonable or not. This would be another possible way forward. But more important is whether there is a willingnes to fix the problem. Olaf ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] CTs are not full copyright assignment
Hi tom, The main reason is that otherwise it will effectively become impossible to change the license because there will, over time, obviously be an ever growing group of people who are no longer involved, interested and/or contactable and once they become a majority the clause would in effect become null and void because it would be impossible to exercise. I have made many suggestions how this problem can be avoided. I have made two such suggestions in the very email you are replying to. If that is your aim, to ensure that the license can never be changed again, then fine - that is a perfectly respectable position to take. It would be dishonest to try and get that to happen via the back door though, by supporting a vote but ensuring that it will in practice be impossible. No, this is not my position. We do you suspect me of it? If you are not interested in trying to understand the problems both in the CT and in the behaviour of the sysadmins, then this is perfectly understandable. But it is dishonest to interpret a small part of my email in a way that directly contradicts the rest of my email. Olaf ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] CTs are not full copyright assignment
Hi Tom, Sure they won't be able to edit now until they accept, but we consider that a reasonable step to try and move forward with the licensing process. OK, then let me rephrase my concern using your language: „The CT make the voting right dependent upon being able to edit. This gives the sysadmins the power to decide who is a potential voter and who isn't. Some of the sysadmins have argued that this is not a problem. They ask us to trust them that they will never remove any voting rights by removing edit rights. The sysadmins underline this request for trust by removing the edit rights of all people who do not accept the CT, thereby also removing the voting rights.“ Asking us to block everybody for six months so a vote could be rigged would clearly be unreasonable and would be ignored. Where do I find the sysadmin policy for evaluating whether a blocking request is considered „unreasonable“? I have been repeatedly told that making the voting right dependent upon the edit right is not a problem and that the CT do not need to be fixed, because the sysadmin team will always be reasonable. At the same time, the same people tell me that it is entirely reasonable to block my edit right and to thus remove my voting right. I see a contradiction here. I (and several others) have explained the problem again and again. I once made a constructive proposal for one potential way to fix the problem, which was met both with well-grounded criticism and with personal attacks. Hardly anyone of the people who criticised my suggestion have made any efforts to seriously work towards alternative solutions to the problem, and those who did were themselves ignored. This email is my last try before I give up. Olaf ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] CTs are not full copyright assignment
Hi Grant, thanks for your quick reply. I agree with you and Frederik that the opt-out idea does not really work. But this does not mean that my other, bigger, concerns about the CT are invalid (listed in the email you just replied to). Note that these concerns are directly linked to the current behavior of the sysadmin group. Sorry I have not had time to think through your suggestions fully. Planning / Executing API+WWW+DB server move, general sysadmin, day job and addressing TimSC's demands list have been taken up a fair bit of my time over the last 2 weeks. I appreciate the fact that you work with TimSC. I look forward to being able to read the page http://timsc.dev.openstreetmap.org/extralicenses/ (I do not want to click Decline at the moment, because I am still undecided, and reading this page might contribute to my decision.) Olaf ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] CTs are not full copyright assignment
Hi Grant, can I still expect a contructive reply to my email answering your question about my concerns, or should I simply hit the „decline“ button? Olaf [Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer, 17.06.2011, 14:53]: Hi Grant, Please list the problematic language you are referring to... Your email on the 18th of Jan or your email in reply to Kai on the 6th Feb. I see several small problems in the CT and two bigger problems. The bigger problems are related to the definition of active contributor. The first problem is that the right to vote depends upon being allowed to contribute. I have been repeatedly asked to trust the OSMF that they would never prevent people from contributing (and thereby loosing their right to vote), because this would destroy the community and so be against the interest of the OSMF. At the same time, I am currently prevented from contributing, even though I have publicly stated several times that I support the planned license change and only see problems in the CT, and even though I am willing to license my contributions under very broad terms to the OSMF. The second problem is that the group entitled to vote is defined in a very restricting way. For example, someone who contributes for a period of 25 years and does all contibuting during holidaytime (e.g. in January and in July only) is never entitled to vote. The idea of giving only a part of the community the right to vote sees very unfair to me. An easy way to fix these problems would be to simply give all past contributors the right to vote, unless they fail to respond to an email that asks them to confirm their wish to still have the voting right. This could be combined with a minimum threshold (e.g. a minimum total amount of contributions or of contribution days/months). I will not discuss the minor problems now, because I fear personal attacks from people who have a different motivation for contributing if I point these out. If the OSMF is willing to adress the major problems, then I might also contribute some ideas about how to fix the minor issues, but I will not do so while the threat to remove me from the community by force is still active. Olaf ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] CTs are not full copyright assignment
Hi Rob, thanks for your long., thoughtful email. There are a number of conflicting opinions in the OSM community: 1. Contributions to OSM should be public domain to achieve maximum usefulness. 2. The contributions to OSM should be guaranteed to never end up in proprietary databases if these were originally made under share-alike terms. 3. The OSMF and an arbitrarily defined subset of contributors should be free to decide upon future licenses, including a possible move to public domain. Neither of these opinions are ideology per se. They become ideology in the exact moment when someone says: None of the other opinions are valid, or: Only my opinion is allowed within the OSM community, or: If you are not blinded by ideology then you will have to agree that all other opinions are hurting the project. I have made the experience that it is not worth to participate in flame wars with people who refuse the mininum respect of acknowledging that other people might have equally valid reasons for their opinion. If the people on this mailing list had been more respectful of other opinions, then it might have been possible to convince me that the OSM community is likely to make the right choices in the future, and that I should trust them to do the right thing. What I see instead is that people refuse to deal with the real problems in the CT and are instead only interested in framing me as an ideologist. “Trust the sysadmins never to lock people out of the community, and we will lock you out until you agree” is a self-contradicting position. Another self-contradicting position is: “Trust the community to always make good license choices in the future. We will ignore your well-argued concerns and claim you to be an ideologist until you agree.” Olaf ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] CTs are not full copyright assignment
Hi Dermot, 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. Please note that the CT do not guarantee a 2/3 majority of the community. Only a part of the community is entitled to vote. I would also like to repeat what I wrote in an earlier email to this list: The process of updating the CT and of responding to criticism within the community is far more important to me than the actual result of this update. Shortly after I wrote these words, a respected community member attacked me as being blinded by ideology. He never apologised, and no one contradicted him. This personal attack is the main reason why I am now completely unwilling to accept the CT as long as I see peoblems in it. Olaf ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] CTs are not full copyright assignment
Hi Grant, thanks for assuring me that the sysadmins have no interest in participating in behaviour that is harmful to the community. Does this mean that I will not be chucked out of the community by the sysadmins? 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 * all other licenses if I am contacted and do not object within 6 weeks. I am also willing to accept any CT that does not contain major problems, such as the one you were responding to. If I am correctly informed, then there are no plans to change the problematic language in the CT, and the sysadmins have no plans to allow me to keep contributing. Or am I missing something? By the way, I have posted my concerns with the CT to this list – in direct response to questions from the legal team. There has been no interest in addressing the concerns, but personal attacks instead, such as the claim that everyone who likes the Share-Alike-principle is a fanatic. Many people also make the claim that all contributors have already lost the moral rights to their contributions simply by joining OpenStreetMap. If the response by the workinggroups and by the community had been constructive, then I might even have accepted badly worded CT. But I am not willing to do as long as the sysadmins are threatening me. Olaf ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Contributor Terms upgrade ready
Hi, Kai described my concern with the currect CT wording very well. Is the LWG still working on a reply? I am asking because if the LWG is convinced that there is no problem, then we need to explain our concern is better words. Olaf OSMF can't force you to accept them, but if you don't, you loose your active contributor status and thus your right to vote. The free and open restriction probably still holds, but the vote does seem to be circumventable by the method suggested by Olaf, by including what you want to vote for in the new CT, then enforce those CT and finally vote, once only those are active contributors who have already agreed to the change through the new CT. Perhaps the vote can be extended to anyone who ever reached active contributor status and responds to a request to vote within 3 weeks assuming a reasonable effort has been undertaken to deliver the request to vote. Kai ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] CT, section 3
Hi Frederik, I think the weak point here is the focus of ownership in individual contributions. I rather liked it how the new CT/ODbL made it irrelevant whether something was yours or mine. Yes, making it irrelevant whether something was yours or mine is exactly the key point here. There seems to be a substantial number of OSMF members who consider all data created by individuals to be community-owned, even going so far as to accuse people who refuse to accept the CT as holding our data hostage. This mindset gives me a feeling that OSMF and the OpenStreetMap community ignore the many hours that I spent for creating OpenStreetMap content. I contributed to OpenStreetMap because it is licensed under the CC-BY-SA. I would never have contributed under a license that says: All your work is now ours. You give up all control. Bugger off if you disagree. I have become convinced that the license change to ODbL is important. If circumstances arrise where a license change to yet another license is necessary, then I will happily agree. And I am also fine with a provision that allows OSMF to change the license terms in all cases were I simply don't care or where I don't have time to look into the issue. But I want to be asked, not forced. Maybe we should work on that bit then. Not give the individual an opt-out right, but instead force OSMF to publish. Something like: As a condition of this agreement, OSMF agrees not only to license the database under the licenses given, but also to make the database publicly available or so. Yes, that would certainly be an improvement over the current wording. But let me change my thought experiment to something less absurd: Let us assume the OSMF have a vote to change the license of OpenStreetMap to Public Domain some time in the future. Let us also assume that the community is highly devided on this issue, with 25% of the active contributors in support, 20% in opposition, and 55% not caring either way. The license change is then not approved under the CT. Let us assume that the PD-supporters are greatly annoyed by the fact the a minority of 20% can prevent what they consider to be a vital step for the future of OpenStreetMap. The OSMF therefore releases a new version of the CT replacing the 2/3 majority with a simple majority. Everyone who does not agree to the new CT is prevented from further contributions. After 6 months, none of the PD-opponents are active contributors any more, so their contributions can easily be relicensed by a 2/3 majority decision. Of course, such a series of events would be hightly damaging to the community. But if the current CT are forced on PD-opponents in a similar vein, then the harm to the community will be done even sooner. Bye, Olaf ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] CT, section 3
Hi Mike, But I don't understand, If you are going to change the CT that has been signed by all these people, don't you have to ask them to sign the new version as well? or did they sign the blank check already and have no say? The License Working Group says that people who agreed to CT v.1.0 will be allowed to switch to the new CT rules, but they will be forced to do so. This makes a lot of sense in my opinion. Olaf ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] CT, section 3
Hi Matthias, The License Working Group says that people who agreed to CT v.1.0 will be allowed to switch to the new CT rules, but they will be forced to do so. Not exactly. The LWG say that the new CT are a sub-set of CT 1.0. There is no need for people to explicitly agree to that, but they will be given the opportunity anyway. Of course you are right. I intended to write they will not be forced to. Olaf ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] CT, section 3
Hi Frederik, Your thought experiment was built on OSMF *changing* the CT. My thought experiment was based on being locked out of the server, being unable to contribute, and thereby loosing the right to vote. This is pure speculation. I think that very people will be so short-sighted that this is an issue for them. I mean, you can be for or against anything right now, but if you are not blinded by ideology of any sort then you will have to accept that times change, and that *anything* you try to enshrine for eternity will hurt the project. I do not see any reason to continue the discussion with you after these ad-hominem attacks. Olaf ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
