[OSGeo-Board] Our OSI License Rule

[Tyler Mitchell]

I'm not familiar with all the nuances of the issues being discussed,  
but the way I've seen similar measures of protection put into place  
(non-software related) has been to require a board motion and  
substantial membership agreement as well.  This builds in the safety  
assumption that between voting members and the board no one person or  
small group can steer the ship in a minority direction.

Any time that concern aboard the board as a governing body comes up,  
it reminds me of the importance of having active voting membership.   
We don't talk about them much, but I believe it is for situations  
like this that formal membership helps represent the projects goals  
(e.g. GeoTools) and directly help ensure longevity of their project.

Two cents from the peanut gallery...
Tyler

On 20-Dec-06, at 5:15 PM, Frank Warmerdam wrote:

> Folks,
>
> Early on we decided that the foundation would use OSI (the Open Source
> Initiative) as our arbiter of what constitutes a legitimate open  
> source
> license, and that we would restrict ourselves to only releasing  
> software
> under OSI approved licenses.
>
> The issue that arises is whether we are willing to guarantee that  
> into the
> distant future, and if so, how we can institutionalize the requirement
> such that it can't be altered by a future board decision (if we  
> actually do
> want to do that).
>
> The matter comes up, in part, as the GeoTools projects contemplates  
> assigning
> copyright over it's code to OSGeo.  The developers, not  
> surprisingly, want
> assurances that we aren't going to "weird out" and try to turn the  
> code
> proprietary or do something else incompatible with our open source  
> mission.
>
> Last March or so we established a legal document with rules for  
> operation
> of the foundation with the intent of revisiting it since it left  
> things
> quite malliable and open to changes by the board.  I am wondering  
> if one
> approach would be to embed the OSI requirement in that document as  
> part of
> our Charter at the same time that we revise it in other ways.
>
> My concern with this approach is that these rules for the foundation
> (articles of incorporation?) can be changed by the board.  So  
> unless we
> made the rules for changing the rules quite strict (agreement of all
> board members?) then this wouldn't be a very strong guarantee.
>
> Another plausible approach would be for the foundation to sign a legal
> contract that binds us to it - possible with one or several of the
> GeoTools contributors for instance.  This would potentially bind us
> indefinately.
>
> So, this email is really first a request to know if the board is  
> willing
> to be "bound fast" to a rule stating that we can only ever release  
> software
> under OSI approved licenses (we should make it explicitly clear  
> that this
> rule does not apply to documentation, data, or other things besides
> software code).
>
> The second is what mechanism do we think is best to accomplish this  
> end.
>
> I've cc:ed Adrian Custer who is following up on this issue on  
> behalf of
> the GeoTools project.  Please try to keep him in cc:es on this topic.
>
> Best regards,
> -- 
> --------------------------------------- 
> +--------------------------------------
> I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam,  
> warmerdam at pobox.com
> light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
> and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http:// 
> osgeo.org
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: board-unsubscribe at board.osgeo.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: board-help at board.osgeo.org
>