[Board] Asking permission for re-licensing from LGPL to Apache

[Jody Garnett]

Martin the geotools meeting did not result in a vote; or any course of
action.

We have a decision making process to follow, which starts with assembling
enough information to know what we are talking about.

I am afraid I was otherwise booked with the OSGeo incubation meeting and
could not attend the geotools meeting myself.

OSGeo hold on to copyright for a project and the PMC run the project on its
behalf. We try to run the project in a responsible manner, occasionally
going slow with procedures and meetings etc... Please be patient as we have
bigger fish to fry right now with our release this weekend.
--
Jody Garnett

On 27/07/2012, at 8:10 AM, Martin Desruisseaux <
martin.desruisseaux at geomatys.fr> wrote:

 Board

As suggested, we posted our request on the GeoTools mailing list (
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=29572383). The
GeoTools PMC had a meeting Monday, which resulted in 2 "inclined yes"
votes, 2 "inclined no" votes and one proposal to re-license GeoTools too.
We do not know yet the final GeoTools PMC decision, neither we saw any
reply to our request from the OSGeo board. Consequently I would like to
recall a few points, and make one proposal (note: my willing is not to
create contentious, but to insist on open source spirit in a context where
two projects are facing strategic steps):


   1. We granted copyright to OSGeo, not to GeoTools.
   2. When we granted copyright, we understood that OSGeo would have the
   duty to behave according its charter, which is not to protect the
   economical interests of some members or to favour one particular project at
   the expense of an other project.
   3. We were willing to trim every code not written by ourselves (while of
   course we prefer not having to - see proposal below).
   4. GeoTools contains thousands of lines of code written by ourselves -
   when we left, we were the authors of 40% of GeoTools 2.6 code base.
   5. If OSGeo requires GeoTools permission for re-licensing our code, then
   conversely we assume that GeoTools needs our agreement for re-licensing our
   above-cited work.


Considering that some peoples considered to re-license GeoTools as part of
their plan to join LocationTech (Eclipse), we would like to reach an
agreement around the following proposal: OSGeo allows re-licensing of the
full Geotoolkit.org code base to Apache 2, including the work derived from
other contributors in GeoTools 2.6 (as of 2008, it was 5% of lines of code
in the "core" modules and an undetermined percentage in the "pending"
modules - we can compute this number if it is considered necessary for
reaching an agreement). In return, we give our agreement for re-licensing
any work we committed on the GeoTools SVN (both OSGeo and SourceForge), at
any time in the history under any license that the GeoTools PMC wishes.
>From an "amount of lines of code" point of view, I don't think that
GeoTools would be deserved by such deal.

    Martin



Le 20/07/12 23:37, Cameron Shorter a écrit :

Martin, board,
(talking as a non-board member)

I recommend that the course of action should be:

1. Note that OSGeo's commitment is to support projects, and support Open
Source use for projects.
2. Note that there are 2 projects with a vested interest in this decision,
GeoTools and Geotoolkit.
3. Note that the board would in principle be in a position to support
Geotoolkit's request, as it is a request to use an Open Source licence
(which part of OSGeo's charter)
4. However, before making a decision, the board, and/or Martin, should
approach the GeoTools community, and ask for comment, in particular ask the
GeoTools community if there are any grounds for objection which might
revolve around how GeoTools might be adversely effected by such a license
change.



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