[OSGeo-Discuss] copyright question

[P Kishor]

On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 1:11 PM, Bart van den Eijnden (OSGIS)
<bartvde at osgis.nl> wrote:
> Hi list,
>
> today I was in a meeting about GeoExt, and the following question came up:
>
> "Is it possible for OsGeo to take copyright for a project which yet has to
> form and has not passed incubation as such?"

Just looking at the above question, the answer would be "no" in the
US. In the US, per  Title 17, Section 102, "original works of
authorship" have to be "fixed in any tangible medium of expression"
before they can acquire copyright protection. Since the said project
hasn't yet been formed, it can't be protected.


>
> A commercial company has expressed issues contributing if the copyright is
> not owned by a trustworthy independent organization such as OsGeo.
>
> Is anybody able to answer this? TIA.
>
> Best regards,
> Bart
>
> --
> Bart van den Eijnden
> OSGIS, Open Source GIS
> bartvde at osgis.nl
> http://www.osgis.nl
>
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>



-- 
Puneet Kishor http://www.punkish.org/
Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies http://www.nelson.wisc.edu/
Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) http://www.osgeo.org/