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

[Jody Garnett]

We went through this discussion for the GeoTools project; as I understand it the geotools project management committee "runs" the project and OSGeo foundation maintains the (c). If we choose to change the license we would ask the OSGeo board to do so.

In most cases no assignment of (c) is needed - GeoTools was a special case in that we had stuffed up the process[1] prior to incubation (and most of our incubation time was spent fixing this mistake). 

The incubation process does not ask that (c) be assigned to the Foundation; only that the code is made available under an approved license to meet the "open source" requirement. It is perfectly valid to do what PostGIS does and have each contributor maintain (c); in this case you cannot change the license with out contacting everyone - but that is your choice to make when setting up a project.

Jody
[1] Specifically the PMC should of defined itself as a legal entity so that (c) could be assigned to it

On 18/11/2009, at 6:57 AM, Tim Schaub wrote:

> 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.
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