Hi, On 04/16/2011 04:13 PM, Ian Dees wrote:
But, as you said, that poll was unofficial, only included 500 people, and if I remember correctly had some very confusing options at first.
My guess is that more than 10.000 people have been informed of the poll (via the lists I mentioned). The fact that only 500 decided to state their opinion can hardly be counted against the poll. Why do we need "official"?
This sounds an awful lot like what happened, but instead of offering a "Yes/No" at the end we only have the option of "Yes I agree to the new license/No, and I realize I can't edit the map anymore". We seem to have skipped the crucial middle step.
I'm pretty sure that we would have a ton of people complain that Yes/No is not ok, they also want to be able to say "Yes but only if X", "No unless Y", or something. And what would the question have been? "Yes I agree to the new license / no I accept that anyone can rip off our data because it is unprotected", maybe?
For example, in my student government groups if someone wanted to change the constitution or institute a new by-law they first had to come together with other people of a similar persuasion, come up with a document that enumerated the changes, then present it to the general assembly to be decided on with a vote. From my point of view OSMF and LWG have come up with a proposal for change and are immediately implementing it without querying anyone else.
I understand all of that. However, in many of these situations you have working status quo, and then someone wants to make a change, and they have to answer the question "why make the change at all, what improvements does it bring, what's the reward"?
We have a situation where those who have spent time with it, and talked to lawyers and all, are positively sure that we do not have a working status quo. Doing nothing is not an option. In licensing terms, this house is on fire. Day after day we're violating our own license and making promises that we cannot keep. Anyone who is *interested* in the matter can, and has, involve themselves in the process, read about reasons, participate in discussion, and so on. Anyone who is not interested has a right to be not interested, but they should not expect to be served the explanation on a silver platter, much less be asked: "Do you think the house is on fire yes/no?" - their input would not be helpful at all.
And this basic concept carries on further; in this issue everyone can have a say but it is not a democracy where the voice of someone who is totally un-informed counts as much as anyone else's. You have to get involved to be heard. And I don't think this is necessarily bad.
Bye Frederik _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
