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

[Frank Warmerdam]

Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) wrote:
> A few questions about copyright have come across my desk or
> face-to-face at events this year.  Frank, for the sake of
> others on the list, could you give us an overview of what does it mean
> to be an "OSGeo project" if OSGeo itself does not hold the copyright?  

Tyler,

I think Chris addressed this quite well.

I would add the goal of open source licenses are mostly to remove
barriers to utilization based on proprietary rights and control.
Once those have been waived by putting something under an open source
license it is *relatively* unimportant who holds the copyright rights
except that the copyright holder can choose to also offer the code
under alternative licenses.

Projects that don't assign copyright generally cannot be relicensed
due to the dispersion of the copyright holders, though individual
contributors might be able to make use of fragments of their
contributions in other contexts under other licenses.

> I think the question was geared toward whether or not OSGeo could
> guarantee future appropriate licensing of a product that
> it has arms-length influence over - or would a non-complying project
> then be rejected somehow?

Chris addressed this as well.  Basically we would be prepared to
support a fork that remained open source if a project attempted to
"go closed".  I don't really see this as a serious concern in practice,
but even in theory there is no taking something away once it was open
sourced.

> Just trying to remember some of the other questions I've heard.  Are
> any of the above realistic concerns?

I don't see any reason to be very concerned about OSGeo having
control, or any need to guarantee things will stay open.

Best regards,
-- 
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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