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
On 11/07/11 09:20, Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer wrote: 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. 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. 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. Tom -- Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu) http://compton.nu/ ___ 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
On 11/07/11 09:35, Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer wrote: 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. Those suggestions were about changing the definition of an active mapper, not about doing away with the requirement for being active. I have no problem with suggestions for changing the definition of an active mapper, though I personally don't think the current definition is a major problem and I also think that most of your attempts to show how that will disenfranchise people are very contrived and unlikely to be a significant issue in reality. I'm not the person you need to convince about that though anyway. I was simply trying to explain why that one specific point of yours, that you don't think voting rights should be limited to active contributors, was IMHO a bad idea. Tom -- Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu) http://compton.nu/ ___ 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
On 29/06/11 15:59, Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer wrote: Hi Tom, 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“? 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. 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. If you have a better way of defining active contributor that is workable then please tell us what it is. 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? Tom -- Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu) http://compton.nu/ ___ 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, Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer wrote: 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. Care to point out the latter? If I were to say that I'm beginning to think you must have a very skewed definition of personal attack, would that count as a personal attack ;)? Hardly anyone of the people who criticised my suggestion have made any efforts to seriously work towards alternative solutions to the problem, I raised the concern that any change in contributor terms would be next to unworkable because one would have to ask everyone AGAIN to agree to the new terms. As long as this question is unresolved, working towards any change in the CTs would probably be considered moot by many. So before we discuss if better CTs are possible and how they would look like, we should determine what flexibility we have, if any. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ 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
What's wrong with asking everyone AGAIN ? If something is wrong, then it cannot be difficult to correct. If a youg organization as OSM is not flexible, who the hell on earth IS ? Or even better, let the community choose what CT/LICENSE is best. Email is free, and a voting webtool is available (almost)!!! Tims webpage lets us choose from a number of license alternatives. (http://timsc.dev.openstreetmap.org/extralicenses/ ) Add some slighty better elaborated explanations, and anyone will be able to understand the consequences of his/her vote. Much better then to be let the choice of accept the current CT or your contributions will be deleted. As a bonus it may even restore the community and you OSMF , LWG and Sysadmins may get the ODBL as well. Gert -Oorspronkelijk bericht- Van: Frederik Ramm [mailto:frede...@remote.org] Verzonden: woensdag 29 juni 2011 20:00 Aan: Licensing and other legal discussions. Onderwerp: Re: [OSM-legal-talk] CTs are not full copyright assignment Hi, Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer wrote: 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. Care to point out the latter? If I were to say that I'm beginning to think you must have a very skewed definition of personal attack, would that count as a personal attack ;)? Hardly anyone of the people who criticised my suggestion have made any efforts to seriously work towards alternative solutions to the problem, I raised the concern that any change in contributor terms would be next to unworkable because one would have to ask everyone AGAIN to agree to the new terms. As long as this question is unresolved, working towards any change in the CTs would probably be considered moot by many. So before we discuss if better CTs are possible and how they would look like, we should determine what flexibility we have, if any. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ 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
Tom Hughes-3 wrote: If you have a better way of defining active contributor that is workable then please tell us what it is. 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. This way, one would also have no need to write an automated script to move a lone node around every month to ensure one retains voting rights. 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.e. one can't do what has been done with the upgrade from CT version 1 to 1.2.4 (i.e. different people are on different versions of the CT), or what could be done to e.g. clarify the meaning of the combination of clause 1 and 2 of the CT with respect to third party rights. 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. -- View this message in context: http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/OSM-legal-talk-Phase-4-and-what-it-means-tp6440812p6530437.html Sent from the Legal Talk mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ 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
On 27/06/11 09:12, Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer wrote: 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 I added a test account to people who can't get OAuth access. http://timsc.dev.openstreetmap.org/extralicenses/testaccount.php Please have a read and let me know what you think! Tim ___ 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
On 27/06/11 09:12, Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer wrote: 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, what has any of this got to do with the sysadmins? I just revived your previous post and it seems to be about issues with the CTs which are an LWG concern and nothing to do with the sysadmins. 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.) You know that you can decline and then change your mind and accept later right? There is absolutely no need for anybody to be locked out of logging in. Tom -- Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu) http://compton.nu/ ___ 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
On 27/06/11 09:53, Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer wrote: Sorry, what has any of this got to do with the sysadmins? I just revived your previous post and it seems to be about issues with the CTs which are an LWG concern and nothing to do with the sysadmins. The CT make the vote dependent upon being able to contribute. This gives the sysadmins the power to decide who is a potential voter and who isn't. We are asked to trust the sysadmins never to deactivate accounts in order to change the group of active voters. The sysadmins underline this request for trust by deactivating all accounts of people who have not yet made up their mind. Nobody's account has been deactivated. People have been asked to make a decision about whether or not to accept the contributor terms. If they don't make a decision then they can't login, but as there is no reason not to make a decision that doesn't seem to be relevant. A decline decision is, in a sense, a not-sure-yet decision as it can be changed at any time. 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. Asking us to block everybody for six months so a vote could be rigged would clearly be unreasonable and would be ignored. Tom -- Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu) http://compton.nu/ ___ 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, Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer wrote: can I still expect a contructive reply to my email answering your question about my concerns, or should I simply hit the „decline“ button? In your opinion, what would be the legal consequence of changing the contributor terms at this point? For example, if the definition of who is eligible to vote in a license change debate were now changed; would that mean that we would have to contact the ~ 100.000 people with edits who have agreed to the old CT and ask them to agree to the new CT as well? Or would you say that someone who has agreed to let OSMF conduct a vote in one specific way will automatically be happy with letting OSMF conduct the vote in a different way? I agree with you in the issue of that the right to vote depends upon being allowed to contribute. It would not have cost us anything to think of something that makes OSMF evil-doing in this regard impossible (one could say that any past contributor who registers with an independent election board would be given a vote or so). I don't agree with you on 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. but anyway that would also be rectified by something like I sketched above. 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. First of all, I think that you weren't attacked personally, we just didn't like your ideas and explained to you why we thought that you were overestimating the rights that contribution to a crowdsourced project should confer. You have never actually taken us up on the contribution to a crowdsourced project is like adding water to an ocean idea; you keep repeating that your motivations are different and that you demand respect for your opinion. Now we can respect your opinion all we want but we'll have to agree on one set of contributor terms in the end. Are you still expecting to have a personal veto on data you touched being relicensed, or have we at least convinced you in that point? It seems to me that you haven't ever conceded the issue; it doesn't appear in your latest text, quoted above - does that mean that you are willing to accept the water-ocean idea or does that mean that the I want a veto idea is now part of the minor issues you don't dare to mention for fear of personal attacks? Secondly, nobody removes you from the community by force. Your right to participiate in mailing lists, go to community meetings, contribute software or make cool stuff with OSM data is not affected if you decline to relicense your existing data; you could even, if you wanted to, create a new account under CT and do sporadic edits without being forced to re-license all your old contributions. If you leave this community, then it is entirely by your own decision. If you feel that there is a threat to remove you from the community by force then you are either exaggerating for effect, or you have a perception problem. Thirdly, you should not try to force a response from LWG about anything by threatening them (... or should I just hit decline). If this had been a geuine question, you'd have put it in a direct message to them; with the list as audience, again you're giving the impression that you are doing this for effect. As written above, I think that what you have said about the CT in *this* message makes sense, and it would not be a bad thing to have these things spelled out in the CT. Alas, I fear that it is now too late to change them in this respect; changing the future-relicense-process in the CT would in my opinion render the existing CT agreements invalid and we'd have to start all over again! Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ 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
On 26 June 2011 17:22, Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer o...@amen-online.de wrote: 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? Hi Olaf, 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. Briefly The main issue I see, is allowing per contributor opt out of a potential future licensing change has the significant flaw that the contributor is not just removing his/her individual edits, but also would be destroying the works of many others who have built on the existing work in good faith. With your proposal those that come before will always have a veto over the work of new members, this is unfair. The edits that I have added today (under CC-BY-SA, or whatever current license) is available to me today and in the future under that specific license using the planet file + diffs available at the time of my edits. If the project gets-taken-over-by-commercial-pigs / changes-to-a-license-I-do-not-agree-with / etc I still have all my work. / Grant 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
Am 08.06.2011 18:59, schrieb Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer: 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'm sorry, but as another contributor to the project I cannot accept that, since I find it unacceptable for you to have a say on data of yours that has since been modified so much your original contribution is barely visible. That would essentially make your contribution more important than all the other contributions. Just because you made the edit first does not mean anyone else of the later contributors couldn't have done so themselves. So I'd like to adapt your terms in a more fair way towards the other contributors possibly affected by your decision: |I am willing to grant the OSMF backed by a 2/3 majority of the |community the right to relicense my contributions, insofar as they are |not older than five years and largely unmodified in the current |version of the database, in the following ways: | |[same as above] | |For contributions that are older than five years or significantly |modified since my original contribution I will not object to any |license change voted for by 2/3 of the active community. This of course subject to refinement, but I think I made my point clear: old contributions are not per se more valuable than new ones, I'd say more the other way around, since it's the active mapping that brings the project forward, and decisions about contributions that have been improved over and over again should not be able to be vetoed by just one of the contributors. -- Dirk-Lüder Deelkar Kreie Bremen - 53.0901°N 8.7868°E signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ 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
On Friday, 17 June 2011, Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer o...@amen-online.de wrote: 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 read your other mail on that topic. I don't personally have any objection to addressing weaknesses in the definition of active contributor. Given the likely slight impact on the outcome of any vote I wouldn't even object to including a time-limited right to vote for all past contributors (though see below), though we would need to be careful then about whether we would require 66% of former contributors to say yes or just 66% of those who ultimately cast a vote. The former would become unworkable as more and more inactive mappers became unreachable. As to the definition of former contributor - in a post-CT-adoption OSM that would probably mean excluding those never to have agreed to the CT (in other words, restrict voting rights to those who still have data in OSM). It remains to be seen whether the difference will prove a significant one. 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. With reference to Rob's reply on this issue, and assuming his quote to be in-context (it certainly matches my recollection), I agree with his interpretation. The quote does not attack you as blinded by ideology. As such, that post, which I also agree to be well-argued, should have no bearing on your attitude to CT. Dermot -- -- Igaühel on siin oma laul ja ma oma ei leiagi üles ___ 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
2011/6/17 Dermot McNally derm...@gmail.com: On Friday, 17 June 2011, Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer o...@amen-online.de wrote: I read your other mail on that topic. I don't personally have any objection to addressing weaknesses in the definition of active contributor. If we take the voting issues seriously we should also have a voting system that is open (i.e. transparent, open source, registers transactions, ...), breaks usernames down to natural persons (would probably require external verification services or maybe a system like CaCert where mappers can certify/authenticate each other by personal contact and passport verification). cheers, Martin ___ 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
Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer schrieb: The first problem is that the right to vote depends upon being allowed to contribute. It it defined anywhere what contribute means? I have heard statements before that sending messages, e.g. in here, also counts as a contribution, as does replying to a request to vote. IMHO, if you log into your user account (e.g. because you got a message about a vote), that's already contribution. But I wonder if the CTs define that clearly anywhere (sorry, no time to find and read them right now). Robert Kaiser ___ 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
The CT/License Vote was IMHO not meant to be a serious democratic process. Instead a majority was searched for a OSMF decision: cynism on like non anonymous voting for a single party in some countries where your lose your job if voting against -fill in your favorite dictator- cynism off As long as the majority is massive, the result needs not to be validated, although theoretically this voting system is very subject to manipulation as it is. Note that I do not accuse ANYONE of manipulation at all. But the voting process as carried out -while probably well representing a majority in favor of CT/ODBL- deserves understatement on no beauty price for democratic quality understatement off Gert -Oorspronkelijk bericht- Van: M∡rtin Koppenhoefer [mailto:dieterdre...@gmail.com] Verzonden: vrijdag 17 juni 2011 17:47 Aan: Licensing and other legal discussions. Onderwerp: Re: [OSM-legal-talk] CTs are not full copyright assignment 2011/6/17 Dermot McNally derm...@gmail.com: On Friday, 17 June 2011, Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer o...@amen-online.de wrote: I read your other mail on that topic. I don't personally have any objection to addressing weaknesses in the definition of active contributor. If we take the voting issues seriously we should also have a voting system that is open (i.e. transparent, open source, registers transactions, ...), breaks usernames down to natural persons (would probably require external verification services or maybe a system like CaCert where mappers can certify/authenticate each other by personal contact and passport verification). cheers, Martin ___ 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
On 2011-06-08 03:25, David Groom wrote: Why do you and some others think that the majority of the contributors are dumb sheeps who will sign everything? 1) Because I've seen postings to various OSM emailing lists along the lines of: (i) I trust OSM to get it right and so I just agreed to the CT;s So trusting someone is equal to being dumb? (ii) I don't like the CT's but I want my data preserved in OSM so I felt I had to agree to the CT;s These people had to resolve an inner conflict and decided this time to accept the CT. Does that mean that they'll come to the same conclusion the next time? (iii) I'm not interested in legalities I just want to get mapping, so I agreed to the CT's; These people probably didn't care about cc-by-sa either and would perhaps sign everything. But are you sure? 2) Because there is very definite evidence that even though Nearmap derived data is not compatible with the CT's, many mappers who have used Neapmap in the past have agreed to the CT's What evidence do you have? Has Nearmap already complained about it? Do you speak on behalf of Nearmap? So, Andreas what evidence do you have, that the majority of those who have agreed to the CT's, have given along a thoughtful consideration of all the issues involved, and having done so have come to a reasoned decision on whether or not they can agree to the CT's? I've never stated such claims and thus need no evidence. But I think it's pretty arrogant to state that over 90.000 contributors (or rather over 120.000 for hypothetical new CT) don't know what they do. Bye, Andreas ___ 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] CTs are not full copyright assignment
On 08/06/11 17:59, Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer wrote: the claim that everyone who likes the Share-Alike-principle is a fanatic. I'm certainly a copyleft fanatic, but I'm sure there are some entirely reasonable copyleft proponents as well. - Rob. ___ 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 Slater wrote: On 8 June 2011 17:59, Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer o...@amen-online.de wrote: 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? 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. If I remember correctly, Olaf did not want a minor change of problematic language, he requested a complete U-turn with regard to relicensing, namely we was unwilling to submit to a 2/3 majority, but requested the option to veto any future license change for his data. If that is the case he's talking about then this is really far beyond what the sysadmins want or don't want... Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ 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
Dermot, Dermot McNally 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. That is not the only problem. It is virtually impossible to define license that follows the share-alike/copyleft principle. You don't have to look further than ODbL with its exemption of produced works - assume that for the current license change, someone had told us 50 years ago if you choose a share-alike/copyleft license then it's ok. Now ODbL is widely said to be share-alike for databases but there are people who object to ODbL on the grounds that it does not have share-alike for produced works - that it is not a real share-alike license. Even CC-BY-SA does have exemptions (e.g. something that is covered by a patent may not fall under CC-BY-SA's share-alike). Who's to say what counts? Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ 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
Frederik Ramm frederik@... writes: 3. OSMF to choose a new license that is free and open, present it to OSM community for vote, and get 2/3 of active mappers to agree with the new license. This is the only bit that is new, and the 2/3 of mappers hurdle can hardly be called allow the board to tweak the license. The process is pretty simple really: - decide what licence you want without bothering to hold a vote - get everyone to sign up to new contributor terms allowing that licence - block anyone who says no from contributing and presto! you have your 2/3 majority of active contributors. Of course the OSMF would never do anything like that... -- Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com ___ 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, On 06/07/11 10:35, Ed Avis wrote: The process is pretty simple really: - decide what licence you want without bothering to hold a vote - get everyone to sign up to new contributor terms allowing that licence - block anyone who says no from contributing and presto! you have your 2/3 majority of active contributors. Yes, and you can have a happy and thriving project ever after, with your two contributors. OSM is first a community, and second the data. If you are only after the data and don't mind losing the community then there are other, easier ways; all morally more than questionable but legally defendable. The license change, however, is not driven by the idea that OSMF is the enemy. If OSMF were (the enemy) then we would have a whole lot of different problems. The license change is mainly driven by the idea of making share-alike work better, i.e. the enemy are those who would want to circumvent that. Bye Frederik ___ 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
On Tuesday, 7 June 2011, Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com wrote: The process is pretty simple really: - decide what licence you want without bothering to hold a vote A lot of thought and consultation went into the proposed licence and polls were taken to back up the conclusions. Of course, the fact that the process took years has led to plenty of mappers who can claim not to have been asked. They've all been asked now, though, and the results speak for themselves. - get everyone to sign up to new contributor terms allowing that licence Indeed. Asking people seems like an excellent way to address your no vote concern. - block anyone who says no from contributing and presto! you have your 2/3 majority of active contributors. Such an approach could possibly work, albeit at the cost of losing the community if the community held the process to be unfair. The fact is, though, that people who said no have not yet been blocked from contributing and the 2/3 majority has already been reached. The wrong kind of majority, perhaps? I'm reminded of an argument I was drawn into at the Munich Oktoberfest last year. Smoking is now banned indoors in Bavaria, and one chap, who claimed to be a lawyer, was intent on having a smoke regardless. He considered the law undemocratic. It had been brought in by a referendum forced on the government by a citizen's petition. The referendum was carried. This guy reasoned that lots of smokers abstained from voting because the result was a foregone conclusion, therefore a non-democratic result. How shall we define democracy in OSM? I'm heavily drawn to a model where the course of action endorsed by 99% of those voting can be deemed legitimate. Dermot -- -- Igaühel on siin oma laul ja ma oma ei leiagi üles ___ 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
On 7 June 2011 09:35, Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com wrote: Frederik Ramm frederik@... writes: 3. OSMF to choose a new license that is free and open, present it to OSM community for vote, and get 2/3 of active mappers to agree with the new license. This is the only bit that is new, and the 2/3 of mappers hurdle can hardly be called allow the board to tweak the license. The process is pretty simple really: - decide what licence you want without bothering to hold a vote - get everyone to sign up to new contributor terms allowing that licence - block anyone who says no from contributing and presto! you have your 2/3 majority of active contributors. Of course the OSMF would never do anything like that... Reality check... So to steal all our precious data and kick the majority of the contributors the stupid evil OSMF you propose would have to shut down people contributing and joining OSM for 9 MONTHS before they could run such a rigged system. The sysadmin team and community would have long jumped ship and started another project. Additionally the door would be open to taking legal action against said stupid evil OSMF and their data would be tainted. Grant Part of OSM Sysadmin Team. ___ 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
Grant Slater openstreetmap@... writes: - block anyone who says no from contributing and presto! you have your 2/3 majority of active contributors. Reality check... So to steal all our precious data and kick the majority of the contributors the stupid evil OSMF you propose would have to shut down people contributing and joining OSM for 9 MONTHS before they could run such a rigged system. You're right, it is a fanciful and unrealistic example, at least from the point of view of keeping a running OSM project with contributors. It would be a way to get a static copy of the map under any terms wanted. However, what I hope people realize is that these 'evil conspiracy theory' arguments are the same ones used to assert that CC-BY-SA doesn't protect the data, any company could just copy it, and so on, despite not a shred of evidence that this has happened. I wish people would apply a more realistic perspective and 'assume good faith' a little bit more in these matters too. All I intended to demonstrate is that no amount of legalese and boilerplate in the licence or contributor terms will block out all possible abuses, so we should lighten up a bit. But you're right and I apologize for the unwarranted snarkiness. -- Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com ___ 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
On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 10:44 AM, Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com wrote: Grant Slater openstreetmap@... writes: - block anyone who says no from contributing and presto! you have your 2/3 majority of active contributors. Reality check... So to steal all our precious data and kick the majority of the contributors the stupid evil OSMF you propose would have to shut down people contributing and joining OSM for 9 MONTHS before they could run such a rigged system. You're right, it is a fanciful and unrealistic example, at least from the point of view of keeping a running OSM project with contributors. It would be a way to get a static copy of the map under any terms wanted. However, what I hope people realize is that these 'evil conspiracy theory' arguments are the same ones used to assert that CC-BY-SA doesn't protect the data, any company could just copy it, and so on, despite not a shred of evidence that this has happened. funny thing is, i don't see these 'evil conspiracy theory' arguments coming from lawyers, whereas i've heard the 'CC-BY-SA doesn't protect the data' argument coming not only from lawyers, but also from Creative Commons itself! I wish people would apply a more realistic perspective and 'assume good faith' a little bit more in these matters too. as do i. everyone serving on OSMF working groups, including LWG, cares deeply about the state and future of OSM, and they spend a great deal of their time trying to ensure that future. (small plug for the OSMF workshop, Sunday 12th - come along and chat with the board members and other interested OSMF members [1]) All I intended to demonstrate is that no amount of legalese and boilerplate in the licence or contributor terms will block out all possible abuses, so we should lighten up a bit. you're absolutely right. no matter what the license we have, or the terms that are offered to contributors, there will always be people and companies using the data without complying with the license, or contributors (possibly companies) uploading data which can't be safely used as part of OSM. i do believe that the new license and contributor terms better define what is acceptable, and that if/when it becomes necessary to take action in the future, we'll be in a better place. cheers, matt [1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Board_Meeting_June_2011 ___ 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
Matt Amos zerebubuth@... writes: i've heard the 'CC-BY-SA doesn't protect the data' argument coming not only from lawyers, but also from Creative Commons itself! I would be interested to read that. My understanding is that Creative Commons have affirmed what has demonstrably been the case all along - that CC-BY-SA certainly can be used for data, as OSM is doing now. They noted that it would not magically extend copyright to things not covered by copyright. That is quite true, but it does not mean that map data is not covered by copyright. If we have a legal opinion stating that, it would be wonderful to publish it now and clean up the whole mess. (It would also greatly help with people using external data sources, if we knew that copyright does not apply.) -- Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com ___ 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
On 07/06/11 12:37, Ed Avis wrote: Matt Amos zerebubuth@... writes: i've heard the 'CC-BY-SA doesn't protect the data' argument coming not only from lawyers, but also from Creative Commons itself! I would be interested to read that. Science Commons certainly used to say that the licences *shouldn't* be used for data. My understanding is that Creative Commons have affirmed what has demonstrably been the case all along - that CC-BY-SA certainly can be used for data, as OSM is doing now. They are going to look at improving use of the licences for data in the next revision. BY-SA can indeed be used for data(base) copyright to the extent that you can claim copyright on data(bases). And that's the problem. Copyright in this area is uneven internationally, irregular even within jurisdictions like the US, and not the only restriction on the use of data(bases). They noted that it would not magically extend copyright to things not covered by copyright. Such as data(bases), depending on where you live and which cases you look at. That is quite true, but it does not mean that map data is not covered by copyright. Nor does it mean that it is, for the reasons I have given. - Rob. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ 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
On 7 June 2011 14:35, Anthony o...@inbox.org wrote: A 2/3 majority of what? When was a poll held? Your next paragraph suggests that you know when. Do you really think it's a valid poll where, for months, you're only allowed to say yes, and then even after you're allowed to say no, you can switch your mind until the answer is yes (at which point you can't change it back)? Yes, I do. And the numbers suggest that most people agree with me. This is besides the fact that the question being asked is not the right question in the first place. It is up to those asking the question to determine what question they would like to have answered. In this case, the people asking for a mandate to change the licence/copyright terms of the database we host are those directly involved in the hosting of said database. They have a right and duty to consider these issues and the mandate they seek will not prevent any of us from making use of today's data set in any way we were already permitted to do so. And besides the fact that I haven't been allowed to vote. In the old days they might have been plucking chickens and boiling up the tar. These days antisocial behaviour just gets you banned. There was no vote. Over 32000 mappers have agreed to a proposal. 387 have disagreed. If you choose not to consider this a vote, fair enough, but any longtime readers have had plenty of chances to form an opinion of your brand of logic. Dermot -- -- Igaühel on siin oma laul ja ma oma ei leiagi üles ___ 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
2011/6/7 Matt Amos zerebub...@gmail.com: very probably that wasn't the official creative commons line, and he wasn't a lawyer, but neither have i seen his comments officially refuted by anyone at CC. .. or even disavowed :-) Even in the European Union, where there is considerably more harmony, this is not at all a settled question. The CJEU will be looking at at least one question referred from the UK on exactly what has happened to database copyright. The best, and most accurate thing, one can likely say is: some contributors may have intellectual property rights over some aspects of their contribution in some countries and some of those rights might be copyright and therefore fall under CC-BY-SA. -- Francis Davey ___ 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
Matt Amos zerebubuth@... writes: also the VP of science commons did say [2]: I'm going to be a little provocative here and say that your data is already unprotected [under CC-BY-SA], and you cannot slap a license on it and protect it. ... That means I'm free to ignore any kind of share-alike you apply to your data. I've got a download of the OSM data dump. I can repost it, right now, as public domain. Thanks, that's interesting. Although he didn't in fact carry out his threat... -- Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com ___ 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
On 7 June 2011 15:20, Anthony o...@inbox.org wrote: Of 8,402,321 people eligible to vote, 8,357,560, or 99.5%, cast ballots--8,348,700 of which favored Hussein, the government said. There were 5,808 spoiled ballots. Luckily our licence vote is more transparent. Details on who said yes and no are available, so any irregularities will easily be found. Happy hunting! Dermot -- -- Igaühel on siin oma laul ja ma oma ei leiagi üles ___ 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
Am i missing something ? Dermot is answering messages that are not on this list. Gert Gremmen - Openstreetmap.nl (alias: cetest) Before printing, think about the environment. -Oorspronkelijk bericht- Van: Dermot McNally [mailto:derm...@gmail.com] Verzonden: Tuesday, June 07, 2011 3:53 PM Aan: Anthony CC: Licensing and other legal discussions. Onderwerp: Re: [OSM-legal-talk] CTs are not full copyright assignment On 7 June 2011 15:20, Anthony o...@inbox.org wrote: Of 8,402,321 people eligible to vote, 8,357,560, or 99.5%, cast ballots--8,348,700 of which favored Hussein, the government said. There were 5,808 spoiled ballots. Luckily our licence vote is more transparent. Details on who said yes and no are available, so any irregularities will easily be found. Happy hunting! Dermot -- -- Igaühel on siin oma laul ja ma oma ei leiagi üles ___ 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
2011/6/7 Anthony o...@inbox.org: And what's the best, most accurate thing one can say under the ODbL/DbCL? Some contributors may have intellectual property rights over some aspects of their contribution in some places and some of those rights might be copyright and/or database rights. The ODbL might apply to some of that. The DbCL might apply to some of it. Additionally, some places might recognize clickwrap license agreements, which might mean that the ODbL might cover some aspects of some contributions of some contributors. That's a fair summary. It probably doesn't even need the qualification relative to clickwrap licence agreements. Starting the last sentence at The ODbL... The difference is - and I am not taking a position for or against - that more is caught by the ODbL worldwide than is caught by CC and, in particular, in the European Union and other places with the sui generis database right. That means that, where I am sitting ODbL may make a much bigger difference than it might do elsewhere. I say may because its just possible that UK database copyright with a low standard of originality survived the directive, which would make quite a difference. The CJEU has been asked. -- Francis Davey ___ 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
Yup, I said this: I'm going to be a little provocative here and say that your data is already unprotected [under CC-BY-SA], and you cannot slap a license on it and protect it. ... That means I'm free to ignore any kind of share-alike you apply to your data. I've got a download of the OSM data dump. I can repost it, right now, as public domain. Said Matt Amos: very probably that wasn't the official creative commons line, and he wasn't a lawyer, but neither have i seen his comments officially refuted by anyone at CC. Nope, wasn't an official line. It was a point about how easy it is to extract and republish data if you want do do so, because of the inexact reaches of copyright, database rights, and contract. The point was to be provocative, not to make a threat. I'm not ever going to republish a copy of the OSM data dump, because that would be an asshole maneuver (which, as an American, is I believe the King's English phrasing). But someone who didn't care about being an asshole could do so, and the remedies are a lot less clear than they are in software and culture. If the asshole isn't in the EU, and didn't get a copy under contract, what do you do? That was my point - to make people think about that. CC also isn't Science Commons. We got absorbed last year by CC, and CC's a lot more about providing choices, not about being normative. Our job at SC was to be normative, to push for more open uses of the tools inside the CC suite of tools. That's why we didn't *recommend* the use of the licenses on data in the sciences, and I was kind of naive in jumping over into your community and yelling about those terms here. I apologize for that. This isn't a science community. It's not publicly funded. And I'm not part of it. I shouldn't have gotten onto the list and ranted without spending time getting to know the community. Indeed, i've done a little mapping since then even. So I backed out, and let you guys hash it out, and I worked out my differences with OKF via the Panton Principles (http://pantonprinciples.org)- public science data should be in the public domain - while I let CC take over the conversation about data licensing generally. I remain an advocate for the public domain for data, and a skeptic as to the ability to magically port the tools of free culture and free software to free data. But I'm a lot less stressed about it than I used to be. Part of that is that the capacity to create data is so great - data that doesn't get licensed well won't get well used, whatever the tools chosen - and part of that is the result of talking to a lot more people who are in open data outside the sciences. Keep on posting old text that I cited, as I won't run from my own words. We all own what we say on lists. As I said, I shouldn't have gotten on here and posted so rashly, but it is what it is. But also keep watching the CC site and blog for information, because CC is the only one that speaks for CC. Science Commons ain't the voice of CC for data, and never was, and it's our collective fault in both parts of the organization that we allowed that to happen (as Mike Linksvayer pointed out in a post earlier this year at http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/26283). Back to lurking. jtw -- John Wilbanks VP for Science Creative Commons web: http://creativecommons.org/science blog: http://scienceblogs.com/commonknowledge twitter: @wilbanks ___ 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
On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 12:59 PM, john wilbanks wilba...@creativecommons.org wrote: Yup, I said this: I'm going to be a little provocative here and say that your data is already unprotected [under CC-BY-SA], and you cannot slap a license on it and protect it. ... That means I'm free to ignore any kind of share-alike you apply to your data. I've got a download of the OSM data dump. I can repost it, right now, as public domain. Dear Mike and John, I understand that Creative Commons declined to participate in drafting ODbL when invited. Why is that? Why the sudden interest in data now, after having declined the opportunity earlier? Best regards, Richard ___ 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
Richard said: I understand that Creative Commons declined to participate in drafting ODbL when invited. Why is that? Why the sudden interest in data now, after having declined the opportunity earlier? I don't speak for CC here, I speak for SC, which was far less integrated into CC than you might have imagined. It's why we eliminated the division and moved west. But we had our own Board, our own lawyers, our own staff, and we lived three time zones away from CC. And we didn't do a great job of being integrated. As for SC, we were involved in the first go round of what became ODBL. We were able to convince all involved to write a public domain tool instead (PDDL) and then the SC protocol on data came out around the same time. CC also decided as a result, in part from what integration we did have between science and headquarters, to rebuild its public domain dedication as two tools - one a legal waiver (CC0) and one as a public domain mark. Here's some background that I am at liberty to share. I wasn't the only one working in and around here, so I am only going to talk about the stuff I was involved in. First, there were differences in the European versions of the licenses that integrated database rights from other jurisdictions. After lengthy conversations in 2007 everyone agreed to turn those into waivers of the DB rights, so that if you use a jurisdiction specific EU 3.0 license, it should waive the DB rights. After that process, which was formally agreed to in 2007 at the Dubrovnik iSummit, we had to implement. That ate up a lot of what bandwidth we had for data rights. Second, in late 2007, a key SC employee who would have been essential to any work on any ODBL became gravely ill and was basically out of action for six months. When that employee was finally back, we were way behind on day to day work and didn't have a ton of bandwidth for projects that weren't funded, like our biological materials transfer and patent licensing projects. Third, after coming out with a strong statement against licensing data in the sciences, because our goal was interoperability, it would have been pretty hypocritical to then engage when people hired Jordan to start working on the revisions that became the ODBL (I believe that was actually OSM). I continue to think that the addition of a contract breaks interoperability - it certainly did so in the case of some core genomic databases - and that the creation and promotion of such a tool poses real risks in the sciences. I would rather work on getting OKF to discourage its use in the sciences, which is what Panton was all about for me. Panton basically says don't use licenses on publicly funded science data, including ODBL - or BY-SA. So it's not like we have a sudden interest in data. CC's had an interest from day 1, from MusicBrains to Freebase to Encyclopedia of Life. SC's had an interest from day 1. It's just that to this community in particular we managed to conflate those interests. It wasn't like we sat around and said hey, let's figure out ways not to work with the ODBL folks. We had very little time, lots of projects, not a lot of staff, and a lot of choices to make. We chose to put our time and effort at Science Commons elsewhere, and we weren't very well integrated with CC at that point either. When I was in a previous job, I heard an aphorism that stuck with me. Never assume malice when you can assume conference calls. That about sums it up. jtw -- John Wilbanks VP for Science Creative Commons web: http://creativecommons.org/science blog: http://scienceblogs.com/commonknowledge twitter: @wilbanks ___ 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
- Original Message - From: Andreas Perstinger andreas.perstin...@gmx.net To: legal-talk@openstreetmap.org Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2011 10:33 AM Subject: Re: [OSM-legal-talk] CTs are not full copyright assignment On 2011-06-07 10:35, Ed Avis wrote: Frederik Rammfrederik@... writes: 3. OSMF to choose a new license that is free and open, present it to OSM community for vote, and get 2/3 of active mappers to agree with the new license. This is the only bit that is new, and the 2/3 of mappers hurdle can hardly be called allow the board to tweak the license. The process is pretty simple really: - decide what licence you want without bothering to hold a vote - get everyone to sign up to new contributor terms allowing that licence Why do you and some others think that the majority of the contributors are dumb sheeps who will sign everything? 1) Because I've seen postings to various OSM emailing lists along the lines of: (i) I trust OSM to get it right and so I just agreed to the CT;s (ii) I don't like the CT's but I want my data preserved in OSM so I felt I had to agree to the CT;s (iii) I'm not interested in legalities I just want to get mapping, so I agreed to the CT's; 2) Because there is very definite evidence that even though Nearmap derived data is not compatible with the CT's, many mappers who have used Neapmap in the past have agreed to the CT's So, Andreas what evidence do you have, that the majority of those who have agreed to the CT's, have given along a thoughtful consideration of all the issues involved, and having done so have come to a reasoned decision on whether or not they can agree to the CT's? Regards David OTOH if everyone agrees to a new CT it can't be that bad, can it? Bye, Andreas ___ 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
[OSM-legal-talk] CTs are not full copyright assignment (was: Re: Phase 4 and what it means)
I have no intention of getting into a debate about whether ODBL is the best licence for OSM data here. However, I do feel the need to correct one very important factual point regarding the Contributor Terms. On Mon, 06 Jun 2011 06:20 +0200, Mike Dupont jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com wrote: This process is about you giving up all your rights, not them doing anything for it in return. No, you are granting rights to OSMF, not giving up all your rights. There is nothing to stop you additionally licensing your contributions in any way you like. This is less onerous than the FSF terms (which seem to be fairly widely accepted in the open source software community). FSF requires full copyright assignment: you lose title to your own code. OSMF does not require that: you still have title and you still have rights, but OSMF gains rights (subject to conditions), too, and can thus include your data in the OSM database. FSF FAQ re copyright assignment: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AssignCopyright Text of FSF copyright assignment form: http://www.dreamsongs.com/IHE/IHE-110.html David PS I don’t personally think the FSF-style full copyright assignment is evil, but accept others may disagree. The point is that it is irrelevant here, because OSMF is not asking for it. PPS IANAL :) ___ 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 (was: Re: Phase 4 and what it means)
The people are not being asked to agree to a license in general, but to give up an allow the board to tweak the license for them. What is upsetting for me is that there is no porting process like with creative commons, and any leverage one might have will be lost when you agree to the CT. OK, you are giving up all say in the future re-licensing. I should be more careful with words. How is this, which is more what I mean : This process is about you giving up all your rights to approve license change or have any personal say as a normal contributor in the OSM, not them doing anything like producing a *final* and complete license or terms for review, spending the effort to port the license to other jurisdictions, or present a plan for how to harmonize with the creative commons in return. I think that granting osmf these rights will reduce any possible future negotiation strength and that by not agreeing to something that I see as unfinished and untested is the only way to exercise the little rights I have left. I am still interested in contributing indirectly to osm, either by publishing data in cc-by-sa (which is what I mean by creative commons in all my dicussions on this list because it is the current license for the data) or some other share data license that I can understand, but I dont see the point in accepting the CT at all if it will reduce my rights. It would be possible to publish data in a compatible licensed form on some public hosting system with no CTs and let people import the data. I could even find someone who has no stake in the project, or someone who has accepted the ct to do those imports if they are valuable. So I am happy to be an indirect contributor to OSM in the future, as I mentioned before, archive.org has much more space for storing even osm data or other map data than osm does. I am experimenting with hosting osm data on git. So for me this all represents an opportunity to help the osm community by building tools and exploring technology to see how distributed and decentralized mapping can work. You can also use the ODBL dual license on files hosted on archive.org, they support right now public domain and creative commons licenses. You can host osm files and tiles there and slippy maps. these tiles can also be used in josm. So you don't need to use a central database at all. There are also other free hosts for map data. I hope that my contributions will be used or usable by people, and that they will be able to create custom layers, be able to host them and not have to submit to a shifting license. The other point to mention is that for the wikipedia hosted tiles, what will happen when the quality of areas goes down the tubes after the data deletions, maybe in some areas you have an over abundance of mappers, but in some parts of the world you will have data loss. On those areas we should consider using the backup of the osm data for wikipedia tiles where it will be better. I think there will be a good argument for doing so. I think you will need both the new and the old tiles to have a good coverage of the world. I hope that we will be able to merge the two datasets in some way in the future for rendering purposes, need to understand the license better. Another thing is all these points being made in the emails, we should have FAQ points on them, so instead of being told that I am an idiot, be pointed at a faq entry that describes this point in detail. An annotated license document for the current creative commons license and the ODBL would be nice where you can see each point and where the issues are. I am willing to try and understand the ODBL for compatibility and reuse and dual licensing purposes. I was also willing to do that before, but the issue of the CT came up and I cannot even edit any more on OSM. Now I am busying helping creating alternatives for people who are also skeptical about the way things are handled. It should be something that OSMF should be doing, instead of trying to force people to accept the new CTs they should allow them to continue on a separate database while the new regime is tested. But since I am not part of the OSMF I am forced to build these tools outside of the foundations, and am them attacked as the enemy. Why am I the enemy? I dont want to be the enemy, I am also interested in helping map the world. Lets work together on points we can agree on. mike On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 1:40 AM, David Ellams osmli...@dellams.fastmail.fm wrote: I have no intention of getting into a debate about whether ODBL is the best licence for OSM data here. However, I do feel the need to correct one very important factual point regarding the Contributor Terms. On Mon, 06 Jun 2011 06:20 +0200, Mike Dupont jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com wrote: This process is about you giving up all your rights, not them doing anything for it in return. No, you are granting rights to OSMF, not giving up all your rights. There is nothing to stop you
