[OSGeo-Discuss] role of foundation with regard to licensing

[Tim Schaub]

Hey-

Not sure if this is well understood or has been covered here before. 
I'm curious about the role of the foundation in licensing code for 
distribution.

If an OSGeo project assigns copyright to OSGeo, I imagine it is OSGeo 
that ultimately makes the decision on how to license the code for 
distribution.  I'm not sure *who* exactly OSGeo is in this context.

The incubation process ensures that code "is under an OSI approved 
license" [1].  I haven't seen any other information on who makes 
decisions about (re)licensing the code after incubation - and I'm 
interested only in the case where OSGeo holds copyright.

Without knowing any of the legal details, what I would like to see is 
some arrangement by which the Project Steering Committee for a 
particular project becomes part of the foundation in some way, so that 
the PSC has the responsibility of making licensing decisions for the 
project.  I imagine this would happen with some constraints from the 
foundation (e.g. OSI approved licenses only)

I know that in practice, this is probably the way things already are. 
Why rock the boat?  Why assign copyright to OSGeo in the first place [2]?

Tim

[1] http://www.osgeo.org/incubator/process/evaluation.html
[2] My answer would include "because it gives legal status to the PSC 
that allows it to make licensing decisions for the project."

-- 
Tim Schaub
OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
Expert service straight from the developers.