[OSGeo-Discuss] Incubation Committee / Contributor Agreements

[Frank Warmerdam]

Cameron Shorter wrote:
> The first thing we are going to need to do is contact all our developers 
> and ask them to assign copywrite.  What would be good is a plain English 
> description of the license and the reason for it which we can all use.

Cameron,

While copyright assignment may be desirable it is not strictly necessary.
As I understand it most projects will not be pursuing copyright assignment
to the foundation.

Perhaps you thought the committer agreement was copyright assignment?  It
isn't, but instead is sort of like granting the foundation a license to
redistribute the work.

I think Rich is going to prepare a plain english description of the
purpose of the contributor agreement.

> Secondly, I'm not sure what we do about libraries we import into our 
> code.  Do we need the library developers to sign the same copywrite forms?

As part of the incubation process it is necessary to identify external
libraries, and their licenses.  I don't anticipate any need for library
developers to sign any contributor agreements.  Some effort may need to be
taken (in a LICENSE.TXT for instance) to clarify what code comes from where.

The incubation committee (in consultation with Rich or other IP review
experts) needs to come up with a more detailed process on this.

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    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent