Talk:Open Data License/Backup Plan
Marking elements "OK"
Not a significant idea but something to speculate: a single edit (node/way/tag) surely is neither a copyrightable work nor a part of a database (collected by that user), when it is the only entry from a user. A poem in tags or some other longer combination of tags could be, though. Meaning that where a user has ever added only one node/way with tags, it could be marked as "OK" even when they don't answer. Extending that leads to a ambivalent slope as to how many edited elements, and how far apart in time, then can't anymore be considered "free prey" and even discussing that seems pointless, as such discussion can't lead to a consensus. Single pubs added a year apart? Probably free to take. One every month? Likely not. On the other hand, it would probably be too much work to isolate such solitary edits anyway. Alv 11:08, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
- Don't cheat people copntributing to a project with a given license! If somebody wants to change the license then a real clean version has to be forked off. (yes, the new version actually *is* a fork from the original...) --Amai 23:54, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Implicit OK rather than an explicit OK
I think that it will be completely impossible to obtain an explicit OK from each User who modified once some data. There are plenty of one-day-contributors which will not be reachable anymore. If one single historic contributor in an long chain of versions will not respond in time, plenty of work will be destroyed. I propose to ask every contributor if he/she in *NOT* OK to shift his data to the new license. It is the same procedure if someones Bank changes the General Conditions. They ask if you are not OK with this, and if you do not respond in an fixed delay your implicit consent will be assumed. --Hendrik75 09:30, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
- The only way they they're legally allowed to do that is that they have made you sign the contract for an account, and in that contract they've outlined (and you have agreed to) the procedure on how they can change the conditions/contract. OpenStreetMap signup page/conditions haven't had such clauses. In practice none of those users would probably object, but the "OSM way" is to be "whiter than white"; avoid any possibility of bad publicity, legal letters, demands or lawsuits. Alv 10:53, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
But that is not deleting. Is that really a legal way of dealing with it?? --Amai 11:38, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
- As long as you license such datasets (containing "old" CC-BY-SA 2.0 only data) only as CC-BY-SA 2.0 (and not as ODbL), there seems to be no legal problem at all --mnalis 20:20, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
Keeping originals
Are there already volunteers to host the original data instead of the ODbL fork? --amai 19:56, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
Dry run
For me it would be interesting how the OSM world would look like if 80% of active users ( > 3k edits within the last 6 month ) and optimistic 50% of all others agree to the new licence.
- +1. I have not written such scripts to show it (have somebody already?), but trying to extrapolate what random 10% loss of editors in my area would look like, it was devastating. And that was even without inheritance problems (I just did simple simulation in JOSM - selecting an area, picking up random 10% of the last editors, selecting with CTRL-F and removing all their data). When inheritance comes into play (so you have to remove all nodes/ways/relations made after the first "missing" editor), it is bound to remove even (much, I'm afraid) more data. IMO, even 5% loss of the editors would probably make way too big damage to the project.
- I did try to get a response from Board (or to put OSMF to vote) what they thought would be acceptable loss of data (ie. with which change will go forward nonetheless), but never got any response (other than "we'll think about it when/if it happens, not before"), which was not very reassuring to me (IMHO, things that get decided on the gunpoint tend all too often to end up with "well, we've gone THIS far, we must not give up now or it was all wasted". I *much* prefer such thresholds to be set and agreed to in advance by everyone; so they could be stated clearly in the choice of the licence switch presented to the users, informing them what that switch may lead to) --mnalis 20:48, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
- You won't get an answer in a reasonable time... --amai 22:03, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
A few sort-of-legal questions that I haven't seen the answers to yet
Hypothetically, suppose that there is a node numbered X, created by person 1 who has not accepted the terms, then edited by person 2 who has. Now suppose that X has been moved by person 2 to new coordinates, and had every single one of its tags changed (for example, perhaps person 1 added a feature that is no longer present, and person 2 recycled the node for something else when doing a new survey). My question: is there any legal reason why the totally changed node cannot be new-licensed (with history fixed if necessary), since all that remains of the original node is the number allocated by the OSM database?
To take it further, suppose person 1 tagged the node "amenity=place_of_worship", then person 2 added "denomination=christian". (Once again the node has been moved, so no coordinate data remains.) Must we delete more than the first tag?
Perhaps this question isn't pertinent to huge numbers of single POI nodes in the database, but I think it could make a bigger difference if extended to ways... So thirdly, suppose person 1 creates a way W with two nodes X and Y. Person 2 moves both X and Y and changes all tags on W, X and Y. Must the way be deleted?
If yes to the last question, what about if person 2 adds two new nodes (between X and Y)? Could the way be saved under the new license if we delete only X and Y from it?
These last two cases are of particular interest to me, as in my travels on my bike I've tweaked to greater accuracy quite a few roads that have been previously broadly sketched by car drivers. It never occurred to me to delete their way every time and start again, but I shall definitely start doing this if otherwise it would become theoretically unsalvageable data.
I appreciate that the problem of sieving the database becomes rather more difficult if trying to apply most of these cases, but it doesn't seem impossible to me, and I think absolute minimum losses particularly of continuing contributor data would definitely help keep morale up in the event of incomplete acceptance of the license.
--Strange but untrue 13:56, 18 April 2011 (BST)