On Sun, Dec 6, 2009 at 5:37 AM, Stefan de Konink <[email protected]> wrote: > Matt Amos schreef: >> we're talking about moving to another >> license with very similar requirements, but a different >> implementation, and that's not "open" and "free" anymore? it would >> really help me if i could understand your position. > > Its honestly terribly simple. We get into a discussion over moving from > a widely used `GPL2.0' like license that works for everyone, and best of > all is compatible with everyone.
it does neither of the above. imagine a situation in which source code were considered not to generate copyrights. any project licensed under "GPL2.0" would lose protection. this is the situation we're in: copyright very probably doesn't apply to our database, yet the license we're using is based entirely on copyright. also, CC BY-SA isn't compatible with everyone. it's compatible with PD, attribution-only and itself. the exact same is true of ODbL. > Some folks here think that BSD style should be our target. indeed. but wouldn't it be better to find a license which works first, then discuss what an even better license might be? > Now the stearing committee thinks that for better protection we should > go for OSI-APPROVED-LICENSE-X; that nobody is compatible with yet and > worse. If we were Linux, we would have to remove our cool exotic network > card drivers just to facilitate this move. And worst of all, all the > nice vendors we were just talking with that were moved to going open are > now bound to a contract... that sounds so... formal? well, such is the nature of legal documents :-( although, maybe it's familiarity talking, but i find ODbL less formal and easier to read than CC BY-SA's legal code. > Until anyone can guarantee that every bit of CC-BY-SA could be used > without problems in the new framework; I'm a skeptic. And basically > think about the deletionism in Wikipedia. Or wasting capital in real life. i'm afraid i can't dispel your skepticism, then. it's possible we could just keep all the old CC BY-SA data, since the license governing it doesn't work, but i think this would be too radical a step for the OSMF board ;-) our choices are basically the following: 1) continue to use a license which legal experts seem to agree doesn't work for us. 2) move to a new license. option (2) will likely mean that some data is lost and i don't think option (1) is what people really want. which do you prefer? cheers, matt _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
