John, John Smith wrote:
And this is why Frederik wants to get rid of data imports, because it reduces the chances of getting a PD dataset by stealth or "feature creep"
Maybe if you'd scale back your demagogy a bit. The subject you chose for this thread is offensive enough.
Nothing here happens stealthily. My main concern is not that data imports are a hindrance towards going PD (an estimated 95% of imported data is PD and thus irrelevant in this question). My main concern is that people, among them you as one of the loudest, use existing data imports as a *reason* to try and stop our move to the better ODbL. And I say again, if we have to decide between "keep imports" and "move to ODbL", then let's start to rip out those imports *today* because they are a dead weight that keeps us from moving ahead.
There is a clause in the contributors terms that allows the license to be changed by a 2/3 majority of active contributors, to another free and open license.
2/3 of active contributors is a pretty damn large group of people who would all have to agree. That's an immensely high hurdle. The license has to be free and open. There is no other restriction, and John is right in saying that this would technically even allow a move to PD.
This is not a planned move to PD, or some stealthy maneouvre by anybody in the license working group. This is just what any sane person would do: Leave the door open; give yourself an spectrum of choices that is as broad as possible in the future so you can react to a changing situation.
We are seeing now that license change is a very difficult process with lots of problems, one that damages the community as well as the data.
At the same time, we have absolutely no idea what the world is going to look like 10 years from now. If neither the mood in the community nor the outside world change - then why should our license.
However, it is quite possible that the geodata world changes drastically. For example, it might be possible that courts rule that geodata doesn't carry any copyright and in consequence, more and more governments follow the US lead and just make their data available as PD (including, let's assume that for a moment, governments in Australia and Chile). If that happens, then OSM still has better data because we have lots of people working on it, but we'd be seeing more and more "competition" - potential OSM users preferring to use other data sources which are only half as good but have no restrictions. In such a world, I could envisage a large majority of OSMers saying: "Let's drop that stupid share-alike license which nobody really understands anyway, and become as free as the rest of the world already is."
(Remember: We're here to create a free world map because there is no free world map at the moment. What we do is *more free* than what all the others are doing. - Can you imagine a time when people say "oh well there's OSM which as a few more footways but it comes with all that license hassle, I'll rather use the free government data.")
This is of course only one potential reason for changing the license in the future. Other reasons would include ODbL turning out to be unworkable for some reason or other, or the legal situation with regards to geodata changing in some other direction. And of course *any* change in license is thinkable, as long as it remains free and open.
Anything we try to cement now will be with us until the end of the project. The current CT are written in a way that makes us entrust the future of OSM to those who are active mappers at any future time - it will be their project, and through democratic elections to the OSMF board and the license change process envisaged in the CT, they will get the chance to shape the license in the way that is best for the project then.
I consider myself a bright guy, but I would never presume that I can today make an intelligent decision that would still be "right" for the project and its members in 10 years. And the *least* I would do is base such a decision on a little data that I have imported from a source which might be unhappy with what the project wants to do in 10 years' time.
In theory one could seek to limit the license change rules in the CT, for example by adding that the chosen license must not only be free and open, but also "have an attribution component". Superficially, this might solve your pet problem, namely ensuring eternal compatibility with data you have taken from the Australian government. (A government that is not unlikely to, by the time the project might contemplate another license change, have gone through several license changes themselves.) But the next think you'll ask is whether that "attribution component" is enough. Surely evil Frederik is already plotting to have the attribution listed only in some obscure planning department on Alpha Centauri! We need to make this clear... and sooner rather than later you'll end up codifying a copy of CC-BY (or CC-BY-SA).
This whole topic is highly complex, and is ill-served by the kind of placative fearmongering which, sadly, seems to be your style. There's no moving forward with a mindset like yours; it's all just hedging what we have and not going anywhere. ODbL is an important investment in our future as a project. Try to sabotage it at all our peril.
Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail [email protected] ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
