[OSGeo-Board] Contributor agreements

[Dave McIlhagga]

Thanks for the insights Frank -- as I mentioned, I'm just getting 
immersed into the issue and looking for guidance. As always, your 
thoughts are a big help. :)

If projects can effectively achieve greater IP clarity through the 
foundation, even without CLA -- then that's clearly a huge step forward 
for many of the projects.

Dave



Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> Dave McIlhagga wrote:
> 
>> One further thought:
>>
>> Is the primary concern about adoption of the CLA revolve around 
>> granting the right to re-license to the Foundation -- in particular 
>> for GPL projects?
>>
>> If this is the main issue - has there been any consideration of 
>> allowing each project to select from one of two CLAs, one that grants 
>> the ability to re-license and one that does not?
> 
> 
> Dave,
> 
> There were several factors in play.  I tried proposing we alter the CLA to
> remove the option to relicense but some people felt this removed the only
> real concrete benefit of the CLA.
> 
> While there is little doubt in my mind that we need to offer a CLA without
> the relicensing option if we are going to have a CLA, for me the most
> compelling argument against the CLA is the amount of overhead it introduces
> for a (to my mind) questionable legal benefit.  Eric and Daniel have both
> been in the position of "enforcer" trying to collect similar signed
> agreements to the CLA and they indicated it was alot of work and 
> hassle.  It
> often delayed contributions for months, and many contributors just never
> completed them resulting in lost contributions (and contributors).
> 
> I think the terms of the agreement are quite reasonable (with the possible
> exception of the relicensing option) but when I imagine myself going to
> some of my corporate contributors, I can imagine it being very hard to get
> the agreement signed.  Even Rich felt that many corporate legal departments
> would be unlikely to authorize signing of such an agreement for relatively
> casual involvement in open source projects unless there was a very concrete
> reason for the corporation to take on the legal risk of signing such an
> agreement.
> 
> To me, the need for a stricter regime of code provenance review is very
> important as part of making GDAL/OGR acceptable to corporate users.  I have
> already had significant concerns about GDAL/OGR raised by SDK consumers 
> such
> as Oracle, ESRI and Microsoft.  One of the reasons I am keen on the 
> foundation
> is to give my project greater credibility.  This includes improved IP 
> clarity.
> I think this will also be important to many of the other projects.  I can
> definitely see it's value for MapServer, or for SDKs like GeoTools.
> 
> However, at this point I'm not sure the CLA adds much real concrete value.
> I think a variety of other stricter controls enforced at the committer 
> level,
> and reviewed at the project and foundation level are the way to go.  They
> can provide real benefits and make us as a foundation able to give a 'stamp
> of approval' to the code and other resources we provide.
> 
> Best regards,