[OSGeo-Board] OGC and OSGeo

[Frank Warmerdam]

Chris Holmes wrote:
> The best idea we came up with was an OGC-contributors (or -interest, or 
> another name) committee.  It would be a list of people who are 
> interested in contributing to the process of making the specs.  Just as 
> a normal project would have 'committers', rewarded for significant 
> patches and smart suggestions, so too could the OGC OSGeo committee. But 
> the 'right' that they would get, instead of commit rights, would be 
> access to the specs, and the whole process of giving feedback and all. 
> So they would be vetted, not just opening up the specs to everyone.

Chris,

I like the idea of an "OGC Spec Interest Group" within OSGeo that would
help provide feedback on OGC specs and that this working group would
have access to specs under development.   However, my preference would
be that OGC just allow more public participation.  The whole move to
RFCs has been partly driven by the need to get wider feedback on specs
before they are finalized.

> Raj is talking with the rest of the OGC guys today, and I said I'd see 
> what our board thought.  The other thought I had was for them to vet our 
> contributors agreement.  They need to be sure that no one contributes 
> ideas that have patents on them and the like, they have a bit of an ip 
> review/contributors agreement.  I think ideally we could just re-use our 
> CLA, that ours would cover the same subset as theirs, and that the 
> process of joining the dev. group of the OGC-contributors committee 
> would involve signing the same CLA as everyone else.  But if that can't 
> work it could be ok that contributrs just sign a different license 
> agreement.

/me wonders what sort of patent related agreement I am implicitly operating
under when I participate in OGC stuff as a part-time DM Solutions staffer.

Best regards,
-- 
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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 OSGF, http://osgeo.org