[odc-discuss] Allow more time: license is not for OSM data only

Mon Mar 9 17:25:29 UTC 2009

Written before I saw Jordan's response ...

2009/3/9 Andrea Musuruane <musuruan at gmail.com>:
> On Sat, Mar 7, 2009 at 11:35 AM, MJ Ray <mjr at phonecoop.coop> wrote:
>> Jordan S Hatcher <jordan at opencontentlawyer.com> wrote:
>>
>> There's attention and there's attention.  Let's get good attention for
>> the drafting process, rather than bad attention for
>> publishing a buggy licence.
>
> I do agree, there is too little time to have a proper discussion about
> the new licences.
>
> I do think that it is better to have a good license later than a
> not-so-good-or-buggy license before. A lot of contributors could
> abandon if they are dissatisfied with the license and that is not a
> good at all. It will be extremely complex to try to make them re-join
> later.

Let's be clear: we're are never going to release a 'buggy' license as
1.0. We also want to ensure maximum participation and feedback in the
drafting process. If to do this it turns out that to do this takes
longer than currently scheduled that is OK but we would really like to
avoid a long drawn out process (given how long it has already been).

To reiterate earlier points:

a) This license along these lines has been around for 1.5 years. An
existing data/db specific license has been at 1.0 since last March. A
specifically redrafted version of the ODbL was discussed by OSM last
Spring. I understand that people may not have seen that stuff (and
they are seeing it now) but this material has been out there.

b) Without a 'deadline' it can be hard to get *precise* and *timely*
feedback from individuals and groups.

> I suggest to do press releases to relevant open source sites and
> communities to gain a broader audience for the license discussion.

I quite agree and please send the announce [1] to any groups or
communities you know about. For our part I must point out that, at
present, ODC itself has only very limited resources -- no dedicated
budget and the efforts of a small group of people giving their time
pro bono. We'd more than welcome the resources and level of volunteer
contribution that went into e.g. the GPLv3 process -- and perhaps one
day at v3 of the ODbL we'll be there :)

Rufus

[1]:<http://www.opendatacommons.org/2009/02/27/open-database-license-draft-available-for-comments/>