@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.

Maps can be copyrighted because maps are not factual. Maps are expressions of facts. Facts and ideas cannot be protected by copyright, only expressions can. In some places a collection of facts may be protected this way. The USA isn't one of them.

Ed is spot on. The Terms invole a licence grant, not a transfer. You retain whatever rights you would have over your contributions, OSMF could not ever prevent you from distributing your own contributions under any conditions you like - whether that be a PD-equivalent such as the WTFPL, or the "you-must-pay-me-£100-per-byte" licence (though I doubt you'd get many takers on that one). If 100 contributors have declined because they thought the CT do not enable them to waive all rights, then they're idiots. As with every time I call some group idiots on the diary, you can quote me on that.

Also, which elitist mailing list is this? Last I checked, all the ones that matter are open to everyone.

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.

Hint: it's "Betws-y-coed", not "Betws-Y-Coed". In Welsh, hyphenated names don't get subsequent capitals, and "y(r)" isn't capitalised other than at the start, as in "Y Barri" (Barry) or "Yr Wyddfa" (Snowdon).

Good work otherwise, keep it up.

I don't like the new license, I hate how it was implemented,

... and the failure of strike-through means that the Fight Club joke falls flat on its face. Oh well ... still, have fun! :-)

Don't worry too much, anything you do can be undone.

To add to the above, if you do something in Potlatch 2 which doesn't quite feel right, there's the "undo" button at the top of the screen. If you do accidentally save something you shouldn't have saved, just ask and someone will help you out.

The first rule about OpenStreetMap is you do not talk about OpenStreetMap have fun!

@wieland: So, if the sysadmins are saying that mobile apps
are a problem, are they wrong, or do you somehow have some information the sysadmins don't?

The tile server is becoming chronically overloaded, mostly as a result of mobile apps scraping vast quantities of images when they shouldn't.

DWP = Department for Work and Pensions : government department responsible for paying Jobseekers' Allowance to people that are looking for work. They send officers out if they suspect someone is working but hasn't told them.

No, nonono, you've got it all wrong. That sentence is obviously incomplete. They're trying to tell us something about our A FATTY.

erm.. what open vote?

Nonsense. The rights you are granting (not transferring, remember) may make them seem like effective owners, the administrator cannot dispose of assets the company merely "effectively owns". If they don't actually own it, he can't sell it.

I'd also echo Richard's sentiments above.

What's your objection?

Can't be that the process is rushed - it's been in train for some 3-4 years, depending on when you consider it "started".

Can't be that the process is closed - it's all been done in the open via mailing lists, IRC and open conference calls that have been fully minuted.

Can't be that the process is undemocratic - it was put to an open vote, and passed with a landslide. (Just like in a real election, those that didn't bother to register have no standing to complain about the outcome.)

Can't be that it's being railroaded - the process is being led by the community, albeit through the guise of a limited company.[1] (Entirely necessary, since we can't enforce any licence unless we exist in some legal form.)

Can't be any kind of objection to OSMF - membership is open to all, and there are no restrictions on election to the board other than those imposed by law (we can't have under-18s, amongst others).

Can't be that it's taking rights away from you - they explicitly say "grant", not "transfer".

Can't be that it's handing rights to an opaque, unaccountable company - the only one of those that's remotely involved is Microsoft (*snark*).

Can't be anything to do with the OS, since there's nothing in their licence that prevents you from releasing everything else.

So, ... what did I miss?

Throw us a script and I'll give it a go. My voice isn't brilliant, but I do have access to a decent studio.

Russ, what power is that? "The people running OSM" are contributors like you or I. They only have power over you if you attribute it to them. I've made it clear to people in the past that given the Foundation is composed of fellow contributors, I will listen to them as fellow contributors, but I do not recognise any authority over me, not the Foundation, and not the Working Groups. I have considered the evidence, and weighed the arguments, and my fellow contributors have made a compelling case for the need to change. It's not as if this change has been rushed through in some undemocratic fashion - there was years of open discussion, a vote open to all, and lots of groundwork.

So take your whiny bullshit and shove it ... oh, right, your head's in the way ...

but I only said I was unhappy with what has happened

In what way do you have doubts that you could grant the rights required? It's certainly not an issue with the OpenData - CT asks you to grant a licence to do any act restricted by copyright, the OS grants you a licence to do any act restricted by copyright. Attribution is not your problem.

As has been mentioned above, make sure you've got enough information in the report. In particular, if the problem is bad routing, include the destination and the directions you were expecting. This is my bugbear with routing bugs in my area.

Perhaps it is not too late for the application of some common sense.

What part of the process did you have a problem with? Was it the years of community discussion that preceded it? Or maybe it was the part where it was put to a vote of contributors who cared enough? Maybe it was the extensive follow-up, evaluation and the voluntary uptake you didn't like? Perhaps you were offended by the plentiful useful information explaining what was happening and why?

(I write the above on the assumption that you're not so stupid as to believe that using OpenData somehow prevents you from accepting - it doesn't.)

Quite frankly, I'm offended that you have the cheek to suggest that even though you had to agree to a legal document (probably without understanding what it meant) when you first signed up, you suggest that you are being "coerced" to do the same now. Are you eating your cake now, or are you having it later?