On 2 December 2011 09:43, Richard Weait <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear Andrew, > > Are you the same person as user id:28334 "laughton_andrew" who has > declined? If you think that government data inclusion is likely to > convince other mappers, is it enough for you? Do you have other > issues that you wish to see addressed first? > > If so, how can I help? > > best regards, > Richard >
Hi Richard. Not sure of the user ID, but it most likely is me. Thank you for offering to help. One or more people with more power than they should have in OSM has committed a gross unfairness in the way that the license change was handled. It very much reeks of the way Microsoft corrupted the Open Office XML standardization process, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML and I am very suspicious that Microsoft are behind this as well. People on the mailing list were censored for the crime of not agreeing with those in charge, votes were rigged by excluding people opposed to the change, and by presenting a very biased view of the arguments for and against. World peace. Everybody want world peace, except possibly arms manufacturers. It is only the terms of that world peace that differ. Even the most demented religious nut would be happy to have world peace, providing everybody else did what he/she was told, when they were told. I am more of a spectator than an active participant, and I do not know why near-map support the use of their images with the original license, but not with the new license, I thought it was the attribution factor, but if the government are OK with it the way it is, then I may be I am wrong in this. The legality's of one branch of government licensing another branch of governments data is a bit of a gray area as well, compounded by people that express their own opinion rather than present the facts. As it stands at the moment, I think that anybody taking OSM data, but not attributing it to OSM may be OK as far as the OSM license goes, but leave themselves wide open to being sued by the government for using their data without attribution. Not OSM's problem I guess, but a bit rude to anybody who gets caught by it. On the flip side, if they do not attribute the source out of politeness, they deserve to get caught out anyway. While I am relatively neutral to what license OSM uses, I have not agreed to the new license basically to support the down trodden, and to not support those who would corrupt OSM to meet their own needs. For anybody else to make a viable alternative to OSM, they need to be have a lot of data that OSM does not have, and the government data would have been a big part of this, and my part would simply of been a vote for poetic justice by making the difference that much bigger. IF OSM can use government data, then I guess the difference between OSM and any fork would not be great enough for the fork to succeed, and I may as well agree to the new license rather than have my time and effort invested so far go to waste, and admit that the bad guys won, and hope that they get kicked out at the next elections, if there are any. For the moment I am simply dragging my heels in case it dawns on someone that OSM cannot use government data after all, and my irreversible decision cannot be undone. I have made traces of roads that are not mapped, I cannot seem to help myself, and I have thought about opening a new OSM account that does agree to the new license, but then I may not be able to merge the two accounts at a later date, so I have left it. Would having two accounts give me twice as much voting power ? Normally a bit rude to do this, but anyway. So to get back to your original question about what you could do to get me to agree, I guess the answer is to just wait, I will probably agree before the deadline anyway. Andrew.
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