[GRASS-PSC] GRASS Development team as a legal entity

[Jody Garnett]

Jody here with a few links to share:

The GeoTools PMC asked these questions from OSGeo legal council a couple
years back, the long and short of it is that this these requirements are
grounded in an international treaty (so nothing US specific).

Here are some references out of that session:

   - Copyright Headers in Source Code
   <http://geotoolsnews.blogspot.com/2016/07/copyright-headers-in-source-code-files.html>
(GeoTools
   blog post writing up legal advise from OSGeo)
   - Update to Copyright Header Policy
   <https://github.com/geotools/geotools/wiki/Updates-to-Copyright-Header-Policy>
(GeoTools
   Proposal based on the above)
      - Coding Style
      <http://docs.geotools.org/latest/developer/conventions/code/style.html>
(GeoTools
      Developers Guide)
      - GeoTools Header Policy Updated
      <http://geotoolsnews.blogspot.com/2016/06/geotools-header-policy-updated.html>
(Blog
      post)

While there were a few surprises for me personally out of this exchange,
the good news is that headers are not strictly needed to claim copyright
(so any missteps we do here will cause long term harm). The other important
note is that copyright is the legal stick we use to enforce our open source
license ... so we end up caring about this a lot as a foundation ( (perhaps
more that proprietary software who use trade secret).

On Wed, Feb 13, 2019 at 1:09 PM Michael Barton <Michael.Barton at asu.edu>
wrote:

> Important questions. But I’m not sure if we have the expertise to answer.
> Is there a legal expert among us?  Also, since OSGeo is in the US, does
> that mean that all GRASS has to comply with Us copyright laws?  Many
> authors are not from the US. How does this work in an international Open
> Source project.  I have a vested interest in hearing from legal minds
> because of other initiatives in addition to GRASS.
>
> Michal
>
> Michael Barton
> School of Human Evolution &Social Change
> Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity
> Arizona State University
>
> ...Sent from my iPad
>
> > On Feb 13, 2019, at 8:56 PM, Markus Neteler <neteler at osgeo.org> wrote:
> >
> > Hi PSC,
> >
> > in the incubator list the question came up if GRASS Development team
> > is legal entity to which the copyright can be assigned.
> >
> > At time the GRASS Development team is not an incorporated entity but
> > usually the first copyright holder name in the source code files is
> > the initial author followed by the GRASS Development team.
> > If that's legally sufficient I cannot say nor what the implications are.
> >
> > Hence this mail to start a discussion on this.
> >
> > Best,
> > Markus
> > _______________________________________________
> > grass-psc mailing list
> > grass-psc at lists.osgeo.org
> >
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__lists.osgeo.org_mailman_listinfo_grass-2Dpsc&d=DwIGaQ&c=l45AxH-kUV29SRQusp9vYR0n1GycN4_2jInuKy6zbqQ&r=lk-7X7CEOMDN8GaGVhiDsuO6gEp1wbG6nfT1XEEEtR0&m=Ys10Rz0ZpFEXXLN_nhgDgUVGQWTr4C1UUQsuavJYjoA&s=GZgL4GgXWxa7XuPpNzXBvs12M5MTtLAc72pCJ2a14jk&e=
> _______________________________________________
> grass-psc mailing list
> grass-psc at lists.osgeo.org
> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-psc
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-psc/attachments/20190213/c2778fbb/attachment.html>