[Board] GeoTools Copyright Assignment

[Frank Warmerdam]

Arnulf Christl wrote:
> Hi,
> if you read 
> http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOTOOLS/Geotools+Legal+Review you will 
> have found some open questions. I believe that they have all been 
> answered but the last one (which I don't get).
> * How will OSGeo handle institutions who waive their right to retain 
> copyright and permit a contributor to add to an OSGeo project without 
> formally granting OSGeo a copy or licensing right?
> 
> This question is obsolete as the LGPL license gives OSGeo all rights to 
> redistribute the code regardless of whether the contributor has 
> explicitly granted that right to OSGeo or not.

Arnulf,

I presume this point applies to (for example) US Government employees
whose work is generally placed directly in the public domain.  They don't
have the right to place their government work products under the LGPL.
The obvious response to that is that the project can then seize those
public domain contributions and place them under the LGPL though anyone
who wants to go back to the original work can use it under public
domain rules if they want.

> * How will OSGeo handle legal regimes where rights can only be granted 
> over past contributions? Will yearly renewal documents for both the 
> license agreement and copyright assignment documents be prepared as well?
> 
> All new code that is contributed to the project will automatically fall 
> under the same license as the rest of the project. PSC (PMC, whatever) 
> has to make sure that contributors only contribute clean code - just 
> like it is now and with every other FOSS project.
> If the project has assigned the copyright to OSGeo then all new code 
> contributed to the project will automatically also be under that copyright.

This would be up to the project, but if copyright cannot be assigned
in advance then the copyright for new contributions would be held by
the author until such time as they sign a new document.  The code is
still under the LGPL so it doesn't really matter much except that not
all code copyright will be strictly owned by OSGeo.  Not a big deal
(to my mind).

> * How will OSGeo handle minors who cannot, on their own, undertake any 
> of these agreements?
> 
> What exactly does this want to ask? Is it "minors" as in under age? If 
> code is contributed to a GPL'd project it is also GPL. Where is the 
> difference? If there are currently minors who have contributed code to 
> GeoTools and are not of age yet to sign an agreement that we might not 
> even have to sign I suggest we wait until that minor has come of age.

If we really wanted to accept contributions from a minor, we would
presumably have to get their guardian to sign on their behalf. But
this seems fairly hypothetical, and could be dealt with on a case by case
basis.

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