Fwd: [OSM-talk] License to kill
Florian Lohoff
flo at rfc822.org
Mi Mär 4 08:55:57 CET 2009
Fuer die die nicht vor seitenweisem Englisch weglaufen. Steve
schreibt was zu den endlosen debatten bezueglich dem Lizenzwechseln
von CC-BY-SA auf irgendwas anderes (ODbl).
Probably worth reading ...
Flo
----- Forwarded message from SteveC <steve at asklater.com> -----
From: SteveC <steve at asklater.com>
To: Talk Openstreetmap <talk at openstreetmap.org>,
"Licensing and other legal discussions." <legal-talk at openstreetmap.org>
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 20:28:32 -0800
Subject: [OSM-talk] License to kill
Where to begin?
Why don't we start with the beautiful community we've built and the
stunning map can be the backdrop. On this canvas lets spread the
pieces of the puzzle and see if we can put a few things together.
We have incredible coders. We have mappers that stay up all night
adding lakes in Bolivia from aerial imagery. We have people building
community across mailing lists, forums and mapping events. We have
user interaction people. We have stunning cartography from the planets
best cartographers. We have a sysadmin team second to none. We have a
volunteer board doing their best with the tools they have. We have
fake bloggers so involved in their espionage they fake their own
retirement and write in a different tone so you don't think it's them.
But, we don't have a shed load of intellectual property lawyers with
aeons of experience.
Now that's important. Laws and licenses tend not to be written by
sysadmins. Or Cartographers. Or even expert C++ coders.
We're a funny bunch, us hackers. We can deconstruct a problem and code
around it. We can avoid logic traps. Every day we decompose algorithms
and we have no hierarchy other than our code. Is your code better?
Then you're better. Am I a better coder if I have a degree in computer
science? Probably not actually. But if I have 10 years hacking on
Apache or something... then I have a flag to fly. And the wonderful
thing about our skill as coders is that it applies to a lot of other
area. We can make electronics if we want. Many of us know quite a bit
about Physics or Chemistry. We know that coding is basically
mathematics [5] so we tend to be good at that too.
That logic and intuition we learn as coders is just incredibly
powerful. We're like wizards with the secret spell and often the world
lays as an open book to us, and we need not turn the page to know the
ending of a story. Because we figured it out two equations ago. Or
it's just like that other coding problem we worked on a few weeks ago.
Or actually, it's like cantors diagonal slash[6] and we can use that.
Maybe if we treat the engine as if it were a misbehaving piece of
code[4] we can figure out the issue just by being scientific.
And that's amazing. It's stunning. It's jaw-dropping. We see the world
a different way, and we build incredible things like wikipedia, or GNU/
Linux. Or we hack together a windscreen wiper which pauses between
wipes [8]. Or a vacuum cleaner that needs no bags [7].
All that incredible skill very often, sadly, counts for nothing when
we want to become managers. Or write licenses. Or diagnose our own
illnesses. Or fall in love. All that logic and training doesn't help.
And we really, really don't like that. We don't like to talk about it
either.
It's an Outside Context Problem [1]. It's the boundary of our world.
It's Godel, Escher, Bach[2]. It's the knowing that there is something
outside of our System of the World[3]. We can't use C++ to manage
people. We can't use logic to fight with a 2 year old having a
tantrum. We can't use the scientific method when having an argument
with our girlfriend, or boyfriend.
And I'm going to have to disagree with many of you respectfully that
all your coding, or writing, or mapping experience makes you a
qualified lawyer. Why? Not because you don't have a degree in law. Let
me say that again - I don't disagree with you because of your
qualifications... just like I wouldn't disagree with you over a coding
or logic problem if you don't have a degree from MIT or Cambridge. Law
is about three things (at least in the societies I've lived in). One
of them you can nail. You can nuke it from orbit. You will win like
some vast chess match. The bit you can win is the logic.
The logic of law, of licenses, of contracts... that is trivial. If the
contract says pay peter £100 or $10 or €1 if he paints your bike shed
blue then your logic will pay him. If there is a get out clause buried
under mounds of legalese you can find it. You will exploit it. You
will win like a champ. I have utterly no doubt. I've used it. I've
sued people and I've won. And they deserved it.
But what you don't have with all your power and logic is a
understanding of case law. This would be pillar two in Steve's
Understanding Of Law. This is where it all falls apart. Because where
all that logic breaks like the crumple zone on a Ford Escort hitting a
tree, is the real world. Logic dictates we should lock up 12 year old
girls for infringing the copyright of Michael Jackson. Logic dictates
we should lock up terror suspects without trial. Logic dictates
breaking a copyright protection mechanism is a criminal offence.
And that's all a bit crazy.
Because here's where logic meets opinion. And that opinion is
called... case law.
Case law says, lets not bring the same thing to court lots of times.
That's expensive and dull. So if this case here, lets call it A is
like that case over there... B. And A was decided like this... and A
is really like B... then B should be decided similarly to save a lot
of time, effort, hassle, money, dullness.
It turns out that if you watch movies about the cool lawyer saving the
day they often spent 3 years looking at obscure case law from 1834
[9]. They use this to show the case is like that other case over
there... and win.
So why is it so hard and expensive to become a lawyer and why do they
think they are so cool? Because they have a magic power and they are
wizards just like you, but their power reins over a different domain.
Sometimes you may clash and sometimes you may win. In general though,
you are better at debugging than they are and they don't know anything
about gcc compiler options. In turn.. .you don't have an in depth
knowledge of intellectual property law or that case that was just
decided last week by the supreme court.
They, the legal guys, will read things like "s/foo/bar" and think it's
s divided by foo, divided by bar. You may read "Without
prejudice" [10] and think "great now we can have a conversation and
not worry about the threats".
All their power and majesty counts for nothing in our world. And all
of ours for nothing in theirs.
But it's not like we're not motivated right? We have money, we have
time, and we have some of the smartest people on the planet and we can
defend ourselves with dignity and grace as the pirate bay folks are
doing right now. And we can attack when we want. But often we join up
with lawyers who are really secret coders. They're pretty bad coders.
But they give us some help and we give them interesting dwarves to
slay and some street cred that they're friends have powers in another
dimension to theirs. So on occasion, we help each other.
This is one of those occasions.
We have two of the most capable legal guys on the planet in this
domain trying to help us. They want us to win. They want to see us
take off and not fly on vapour.
But what do we do?
We blame Steve because he's evil. We blame the process because it took
too long. We blame the working group for not being quicker. We figure
the foundation must be culpable. We write long rants about how it's a
dire emergency...
But pause for a second.
Close your eyes, take a deep breath. Open them and look around. Oh...
there's that massive community we've built. Look over there, it's an
amazing map we've built from a blank canvas in to the most stunning,
best, most fantastic map on the planet. Birds are singing. Honestly.
An angelic choir descends and something akin to the ITO! animation
explodes and dances in front of you, completing a map of the world for
free in front of your eyes. For *free*. For __FREE__.
Now lets turn to the board and the working group. They're volunteers..
but they haven't been doing their job! They've been slow! It took them
so, so *so* long to get things done... But hold on nobody has been
saying they could have done better... oh and we don't see any offers
of help.. or offers to be on the group. Because it's a bit easier to
stand on the sidelines and we like it here. But lets just question
them, their reputations and priorities anyway... after all they
deserve it for volunteering.
Oh... hang on a minute most of the delay was actually due to
consultation between lawyers in the other dimension. The other land
where it's ok to take time to review legal processes in a quiet,
informal, slow and deliberate way. Like how it's done by actual 'real'
lawyers in actual 'real' legal firms.
But! Hold on! We should see every draft of the license! Every time
they add a comma, or review something! Every sentence! You're taking
away our rights you evil volunteers!
Yes we should in the same way that a lawyer should comment on your C++
or ruby code after every 20 characters. They should comment on your
mistakes, your lack of foresight. They should publish widely. They
should blame you when it doesn't compile because you left off a semi-
colon. If a function is half written, so be it! Release it anyway. But
we don't tend to do things like that, do we? We do things like release
the code by doing a subversion checkin... when we're reasonably happy
with the code we've done.
Ladies and gentlemen you just saw a subversion checkin of the license.
Now you can blame me for being sometimes a little overzealous for
allowing them the privacy and time to complete their work.. but I have
a lot of respect for them and a lot of time for them. I believe by
showing that we understood them. That I knew what I did not know. That
I knew I wasn't a lawyer. That we weren't going to slap them with 300
emails on every release... that we built something better. You can
disagree with me. You can point to the projects you've built with
100,000 people in them. You can point to your legal buddies who are
better than mine... but that was the decision I (and by the way the
license team and the board) went with.
Lets look at the other reason we did that. On any objective measure,
legal time is worth more than my time. The last time I had to sue
someone because the infringed my copyrights the guy was charging £250
an hour. An hour! Insane! So every hour they spend looking at your
comments is an hour not making the license better with the peer review
from another lawyer. Or making £250. And they're doing this for us for
free.
If you were paid £250 an hour and worked for free for someone on the
side... would you like to work on the Space Shuttle or a bicycle?
Because what you're asking them to do is work on your bicycle because
it doesn't have rocket engines. You don't understand enough about
bicycles to know they traditionally don't have rockets attached and so
you take up a lot of their time arguing about rockets... and not about
your flat tyre.
They're far too polite to say this of course.
But, and you know this, we listened anyway. We worked hard to build a
home around the license. Somewhere to vent your frustrations. We built
another comment period in. Again. Jordan will take a look at your
rocket plans and space lasers. he will take a lot of time and distil
it down in to a puncture repair kit. And you know what the license
will be better for it. And he'll thank you for it. And we will all be
better off.
So lets concentrate on that. Lets build a better process. Lets build a
consensus. Lets understand that they know more about law than we do
and act in a humble and respectful way. Lets help and become a
volunteer. Lets put all these good ideas in to a plan. And lets build
a better project.
Notes
=====
* I'm well aware that the above doesn't cover every single issue
raised like whether you have a crack team of intellectual property
lawyers ready to spring in to action, or you're not a coder. The above
was a vast set of metaphors, taking it literally implies you're not
cognizant of that. Re-read the stuff about logic not applying totally
to love, management, law, war and so on ad infinitum.
* Stop thinking that CCBYSA applies to OSM. It doesn't very well at
all. Richard Fairhurst can tell you the 3.29 billion reasons why
* Stop thinking Steve is Evil and out to own the license. If you spent
more than 34 seconds thinking about it you'd realise that the best
possible route for him would be Public Domain so he could do whatever
he wanted. Really. Think about it. In fact I truly believe viral is
better for the health of this project and I've fought hard against my
own self interest on this.
* Why hasn't Steve responded in 3 days and rah rah rah. Because I'm
taking time to digest all your comments and it takes time because
there are so many, there are repeats and there is the personal stuff
to distil out.
Best
Steve
[1] see iain m banks
[2] see hofstadter
[3] see neal stephenson
[4] see the zen of motorcycle maintenance
[5] see turing or danny hillis or the diamond age
[6] its really scary, see GEB
[7] see dyson and his book
[8] see flash of genius
[9] see good will hunting
[10] you really, really need to look that up if you don't know what it
means
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--
Florian Lohoff flo at rfc822.org +49-171-2280134
Those who would give up a little freedom to get a little
security shall soon have neither - Benjamin Franklin
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