[mapguide-internals] Source provenance review

[Robert Bray]

Daniel,

Thanks for taking the time to be thorough, great comments and questions. 
Answers inline below...

Bob

Daniel Morissette wrote:
> I was reviewing the MapGuide Provenance Review and doing some spot 
> checks in the 1.1 source package and have a few questions/comments for 
> the PSC:
> 
> 1- License.htm
> 
> The source package comes with a License.htm that contains a copy of the 
> MapGuide License (LGPL) and of the specific licenses of some of the 
> packages under Oem. However not all packages are listed. If we're going 
> to list some licenses there, we should probably list all of them for 
> completeness and make sure we maintain that file in the future.
> 
> I noticed that there are no mentions of the following packages in 
> License.htm:
> 
> - DWFTK
> - SQLite
> - FDO
> - dbxml
> 
> Should they be added?
> 
Yes, Tom will take care of this.


> 2- Should there be a README file (or README.TXT to be more 
> Windows-friendly) in the root of the source package introducing MapGuide 
> and pointing to the license file, build/install instructions, etc? For 
> some distribution packaging guidelines, see: 
> http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-Release-Practice-HOWTO/distpractice.html
> 
Yes, Tom will take care of this.


> 3- The links to the licenses (old online source browser) are all broken 
> in the code provenance review document at 
> http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/MapGuide_Provenance_Review
> Should we update the links to point to 
> https://svn.osgeo.org/svn/mapguide/trunk/MgDev/?
> 
Migration is such a pain. We'll fix this.


> 4- Most (all?) of the html/js/php files do not contain a 
> copyright/license header. I believe this is fine, but I think it was 
> agreed in the last IRC meeting that a single copyright/license file 
> would be added per directory where those files reside. Is this still the 
> plan? Perhaps that should be noted in the code provenance review and 
> added to the project's TODO list?
> 
Yep I agree, this is on Tom's list.


> 5- The current copyright holder on most files is Autodesk. What is the 
> plan for future contributions? Will the copyright holder in the source 
> file header be the individual who created the file, or will the 
> copyright be assigned to OSGeo (or ADSK?)?
> 
When I first read the CLA I was left with the same question, so I 
consulted legal. Copyright is held by the creator of the file. So all of 
the core source files have an ADSK copyright which is fine. All of the 
Web Studio code has a DM Solutions copyright, which is also fine.


> 6- I tried to answer #5 above myself by reviewing the CLA, but that only 
> led to another question: The CLA applies to "Your present and future 
> Contributions submitted to the Foundation" without any specific mention 
> of the MapGuide project. Am I right in my understanding that if a 
> developer signs this CLA today for the MapGuide project, the CLA 
> automatically extents to any Foundation project? Is this really the 
> intention, is this a good thing? I would have thought that a CLA should 
> have been project-specific and not apply to every contribution of an 
> individual made to the Foundation. (As you can tell I'm not a lawyer, 
> sorry if that's a dumb question)
> 
Not a dumb question I completely missed this (I am certainly not a 
lawyer either). That is not the intention. This CLA is supposed to apply 
to the MapGuide project only as other OSGeo projects may choose not to 
use a CLA. I'll get this clarified with legal and have the CLA updated 
if necessary.

> 
> Daniel