Sorry to see you go, but glad you've decided to accept the terms for your existing contributions. I'm not happy with the CT/license process myself, but all I really care about is the map. If they wanted to go PD it wouldn't matter to me. If a CC-BY-SA fork is more successful than OSM (though I doubt it), then I'll switch to that project. Thanks for all your contributions!
I'm tempted to say the same thing myself. I don't care what license my data is under and I have accepted the new license but I do not want to see data deleted because I think that this will kill the project. OSM data is useful because it is relatively accurate and complete in many parts of the world and deleting data will create holes in the map which will make the data useless (e.g. suppose 1/4 of road segments were created by users who didn't accept the new license, but they are scattered semi-randomly - deleting this data makes the map data totally useless for end users.) Then users will have to waste a bunch of time repairing this mess but the incompleteness of the data will scare off users. As long as there are a significant number of users who have not accepted the license terms (and there may be a significant number of contributions by users who contributed for a while then left the project and forgot about OSM and didn't bother to respond to emails), this will be a problem. I want to spend my time mapping not wasting it cleaning up a mess made by legalese that 99.9% of non-lawyer OSM contributors couldn't care less about. If this crazy idea of deleting data goes ahead I guarantee that everyone will migrate to a fork with the old license and intact data versus the ODBL version with a quarter of the data missing.
I could not agree more with you! Maybe we should publicly confirm to woodpeck and his whole License Working Group that we will never restore any once deleted road.
If their mailbox is flooded with messages declining additional work for their license change, they will start thinking before they delete any data!
I was thinking it had been a while since anyone decided to pointlessly bitch and whine about the licence change. I'm sorry you found that a process that has taken over four years, and has been fully open at all times, with allamaterial discussion held in public, was apparently not transparent enough for you. I'm sorry that you felt that perhaps we hadn't dealt with the FUDing trolls (particularly the Australians) better. Maybe we should have given in to their demands and stuck with the utterly unworkable (and inapplicable in some important jurisdictions) CC-BY-SA, and retained the previous attribution guidelines, which read something along the lines of "Well, your guess is as good as mine." (I'm not being facetious, BTW. I'm told that OSM was approached by people in TV news wanting to know how they were supposed to dii it. We didn't know either.)
Thanks for playing, watch the door behind you as you leave.
@chriscf: You are talking complete nonsense. From first word to last.
Obviously I don't get any useless work to do on the serious side of the wall. But trolls like you will trace my ways and traces again. Congratulations! ;-)
@chriscf I have followed the lists for years and can't remember any concrete examples of license violations where the weakness of cc-by-sa has come into play. Larger players will respect the license because they need everyone else to respect their licenses. If Google et al started ripping off osm it would take about 2 seconds before people did the same to them.
Anyway, I respect other contributors (which is more than you have done - search the mailing lists for chriscf - not exactly the world's most popular mapper!) and their preference to change the license but it doesn't mean that I need to follow along with it if I don't agree.
The strange thing I keep seeing again and again is the attitudes of people on the two sides: there's a cold, harsh, unsympathetic attitude from the pro-licence-change people. There are frustrated, well-meaning but impotent pleas from the other side. It's very sad to see good people go.
I've tried and failed to understand the licence issues. I can't believe it could be so complicated, but there has been a real failing of the people involved to communicate honestly and in good faith about the changes. Yes, the mailing lists are open. That's not the same thing. Dismissing the complaints of "the Australians", who will lose vast amounts of data (myself, hundreds of hours of work) as "FUDing trolls" is not good faith.
It's sad, but I don't see many people expressing sadness - I see the kind of vengeful "good riddance" comments exemplified above.
@devonshire: From what I can gather, most complaints have been resolved informally, meaning without the need to resort to legal action. For most, this has been a relief, because there's no certainty as to how any such action would turn out. The one thing we do know for certain is that if the violator is in the US and has rendered their own map from our data, we'd have no chance under CC-BY-SA.
@stevage: "Dismissing the complaints of "the Australians", who will lose vast amounts of data (myself, hundreds of hours of work) as "FUDing trolls" is not good faith."
1. Some seem to think that having traced from NearMap means they can't agree to contribute under the new terms. They're idiots for thinking it, and even bigger idiots for ignoring all attempts to correct them.
2. The main reason you're losing hundreds of hours of work is that some idiot decided to negotiate an agreement on CC-BY-SA long after steps were afoot to make a change. That's like buying new furniture for your home to match the decor when you're about to move out.
As for the suggestion that these people aren't FUDing, I defy you to present a single cogent argument from the likes of 80n or JohnSmith that wasn't FUD.
OpenStreetMap
Discussion
Comment from Richard on 5 June 2011 at 16:09
Bye.
Comment from c2r on 5 June 2011 at 16:32
PD?
Comment from JoshD on 5 June 2011 at 18:37
Sorry to see you go, but glad you've decided to accept the terms for your existing contributions. I'm not happy with the CT/license process myself, but all I really care about is the map. If they wanted to go PD it wouldn't matter to me. If a CC-BY-SA fork is more successful than OSM (though I doubt it), then I'll switch to that project. Thanks for all your contributions!
Comment from andrewpmk on 5 June 2011 at 19:25
I'm tempted to say the same thing myself. I don't care what license my data is under and I have accepted the new license but I do not want to see data deleted because I think that this will kill the project. OSM data is useful because it is relatively accurate and complete in many parts of the world and deleting data will create holes in the map which will make the data useless (e.g. suppose 1/4 of road segments were created by users who didn't accept the new license, but they are scattered semi-randomly - deleting this data makes the map data totally useless for end users.) Then users will have to waste a bunch of time repairing this mess but the incompleteness of the data will scare off users. As long as there are a significant number of users who have not accepted the license terms (and there may be a significant number of contributions by users who contributed for a while then left the project and forgot about OSM and didn't bother to respond to emails), this will be a problem. I want to spend my time mapping not wasting it cleaning up a mess made by legalese that 99.9% of non-lawyer OSM contributors couldn't care less about. If this crazy idea of deleting data goes ahead I guarantee that everyone will migrate to a fork with the old license and intact data versus the ODBL version with a quarter of the data missing.
Comment from marscot on 5 June 2011 at 20:49
sorry to see another mapper go
Comment from 42429 on 5 June 2011 at 21:04
@andrewpmk
I could not agree more with you! Maybe we should publicly confirm to woodpeck and his whole License Working Group that we will never restore any once deleted road.
If their mailbox is flooded with messages declining additional work for their license change, they will start thinking before they delete any data!
Comment from !i! on 6 June 2011 at 06:22
A honorable decision not to argue with us and to delete all your works. Thanks :)
Comment from Firefishy on 6 June 2011 at 13:38
Woodpeck is not a member of License Working Group.
Comment from chriscf on 6 June 2011 at 18:37
I was thinking it had been a while since anyone decided to pointlessly bitch and whine about the licence change. I'm sorry you found that a process that has taken over four years, and has been fully open at all times, with allamaterial discussion held in public, was apparently not transparent enough for you. I'm sorry that you felt that perhaps we hadn't dealt with the FUDing trolls (particularly the Australians) better. Maybe we should have given in to their demands and stuck with the utterly unworkable (and inapplicable in some important jurisdictions) CC-BY-SA, and retained the previous attribution guidelines, which read something along the lines of "Well, your guess is as good as mine." (I'm not being facetious, BTW. I'm told that OSM was approached by people in TV news wanting to know how they were supposed to dii it. We didn't know either.)
Thanks for playing, watch the door behind you as you leave.
Comment from amai on 6 June 2011 at 18:58
@chriscf: You are talking complete nonsense. From first word to last.
Obviously I don't get any useless work to do on the serious side of the wall. But trolls like you will trace my ways and traces again. Congratulations! ;-)
Comment from robert on 6 June 2011 at 23:00
Bye!
Comment from chriscf on 7 June 2011 at 01:20
@amai: Complete nonsense? Which part? "a process that has taken over four years"? Perhaps you'll now be telling us that the archived messages from February 2007 are forged? "has been fully open at all times"? Last time I checked, the mailing list and wiki archives are visible for all to see, and available for anyone to participate. "all material discussion held in public"? If there's a super-secret back channel (other than the lawyers, obviously), then prove it. As for the "FUDing" trolls, we have people on the mailing lists that are still parroting the "you're signing away your rights" nonsense. It's bollocks, plain and simple. On the one hand, we have random people on the diary bitching about how they like CC-BY-SA and that we should keep it, and on the other we had the lawyers telling us that it didn't work. I think I know who I'd trust on this one, and it isn't the randoms.
If there's anyone here that's been talking complete nonsense, it's every single person that felt the need to whine about stuff they didn't understand, and yet made no effort to try and understand it.
Comment from devonshire on 7 June 2011 at 08:04
@chriscf I have followed the lists for years and can't remember any concrete examples of license violations where the weakness of cc-by-sa has come into play. Larger players will respect the license because they need everyone else to respect their licenses. If Google et al started ripping off osm it would take about 2 seconds before people did the same to them.
Anyway, I respect other contributors (which is more than you have done - search the mailing lists for chriscf - not exactly the world's most popular mapper!) and their preference to change the license but it doesn't mean that I need to follow along with it if I don't agree.
Comment from stevage on 7 June 2011 at 11:05
The strange thing I keep seeing again and again is the attitudes of people on the two sides: there's a cold, harsh, unsympathetic attitude from the pro-licence-change people. There are frustrated, well-meaning but impotent pleas from the other side. It's very sad to see good people go.
I've tried and failed to understand the licence issues. I can't believe it could be so complicated, but there has been a real failing of the people involved to communicate honestly and in good faith about the changes. Yes, the mailing lists are open. That's not the same thing. Dismissing the complaints of "the Australians", who will lose vast amounts of data (myself, hundreds of hours of work) as "FUDing trolls" is not good faith.
It's sad, but I don't see many people expressing sadness - I see the kind of vengeful "good riddance" comments exemplified above.
Comment from chriscf on 7 June 2011 at 17:34
@devonshire: From what I can gather, most complaints have been resolved informally, meaning without the need to resort to legal action. For most, this has been a relief, because there's no certainty as to how any such action would turn out. The one thing we do know for certain is that if the violator is in the US and has rendered their own map from our data, we'd have no chance under CC-BY-SA.
@stevage: "Dismissing the complaints of "the Australians", who will lose vast amounts of data (myself, hundreds of hours of work) as "FUDing trolls" is not good faith."
1. Some seem to think that having traced from NearMap means they can't agree to contribute under the new terms. They're idiots for thinking it, and even bigger idiots for ignoring all attempts to correct them.
2. The main reason you're losing hundreds of hours of work is that some idiot decided to negotiate an agreement on CC-BY-SA long after steps were afoot to make a change. That's like buying new furniture for your home to match the decor when you're about to move out.
As for the suggestion that these people aren't FUDing, I defy you to present a single cogent argument from the likes of 80n or JohnSmith that wasn't FUD.