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

[Seven (aka Arnulf)]

On 07/30/2012 12:11 PM, Martin Desruisseaux wrote:
> Hello Ben
> 
> Thanks you very much for your reply. There is some notes in-line,
> followed by a request to the OSGeo board and a modification of our
> request to the GeoTools PMC.
> 
> 
> Le 30/07/12 08:00, Ben Caradoc-Davies a écrit :
>> although I am a member of the PMC, I am now writing as an individual:
>> I personally agree with Frank's interpretation that contributors can
>> relicense their own contributions as they see fit. In fact, before
>> seeing your email quoting Frank, I quoted this same section of the
>> contributor agreement on another list.
>>
>> Martin, I welcome your approach to the OSGeo board, because the
>> interpretation of this clause affects all OSGeo projects and should be
>> addressed by the OSGeo board.
> 
> I agree that this question should be resolved by the OSGeo board. My
> email sent last Friday [1] was asking for such clarification. 

Martin,
this is an acknowledgement that the board has received your request and
will be acting upon at the soonest possible time. Please take into
account that we are in the middle of summer and people might be on
holidays. Our next scheduled board meeting is on 9. August [1], I added
the topic to the agenda.

Personally I agree with Frank but we will have to get approval form all
directors. Until then everything will just be personal opinions. Please
be patient if possible.

Best regards,
Arnulf

[1] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_Meeting_2012-08-09#Agenda

While
> waiting for an acknowledgement from the OSGeo board that our request has
> been received, we try to get other advises about our rights. I have sent
> an email to Adrian Custer, who wrote the Copyright Assignment together
> with a Lawyer [2]. Adrian confirmed us that the Copyright Assignment
> intend is to give maximal rights to the contributor, including the right
> to distribute their own contribution under other licenses - providing
> that all other contributions have been removed.
> 
> 
>> I note that in the link you give above, it seems to me that Jody was
>> explicitly referring to relicensing *all* of GeoTools 2.6. This is
>> quite different to the licence that is granted to you under your
>> contributor agreement to use your own contributions. These are quite
>> separate issues and it would be helpful if we keep them separate as in
>> in my view the PMC can only address questions about GeoTools, not the
>> meaning of the OSGeo agreement.
> 
> I agree that they are separated issues, as I said last Friday [3].
> Admittedly, my earlier emails was not making the distinction as clear
> (while we never asked for relicensing all of GeoTools 2.6).
> 
> 
>> I am looking forward to the resolution of this issue.
> 
> We would also appreciate a lot (this is my request) a formal statement
> from OSGeo stating whatever the right to "use, copy, prepare derivative
> works of, publicly display or
> perform, and distribute the Submission" granted to every contributors by
> the Copyright Assignment includes the right to distribute the submission
> (and only the submission) under an other license, as Adrian said that it
> was intended, and on-per with the rights of those who signed the
> Contributor Agreement instead than the Copyright Assignment.
> 
> I have no problem if OSGeo wishes to restrict that right to approved
> open-source licenses. While such restriction doesn't seem to be the
> original intend, it would not affect us.
> 
> Provided that OSGeo confirms this contributor's right, then I would like
> to modify our request to the GeoTools PMC: we would like to withdrawn
> all our requests to re-license any GeoTools code, in any modules
> including the "core" ones. We had a discussion at Geomatys and we think
> that it would be in the best communities interest to make the projects
> individuality clearer.
> 
> In the hope to see this issue resolved,
> 
>     Regards,
> 
>         Martin
> 
> 
> [1] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/board/2012-July/009912.html
> [2] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/incubator/2008-January/000867.html
> [3] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/board/2012-July/009920.html
> 
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