License needed: Marcus Please start the process!

[Bernhard Reiter]

On Mon, Oct 11, 1999 at 09:58:33PM +1000, David Hine wrote:
> While I believe that Rich has a point in suggesting that we may benefit 
> from a free interview with an intellectual property specialist,  I am 
> suggesting that Rich is capable of doing this and that he should do so, 
> offering the SUM to the list. 

In my experience intellectual property specialist have no clue about 
free software. Chances are high they might add unnecessary confusion.
Of course any high quality input is appreciated.

> I believe that Marcus Neteler, perhaps in concert with the development 
> team at Baylor, should start the process. 
As far as I know he already brought up that issue a couple of times
towards the group located at Baylor.

> The process could be: 
> 1./ Marcus declares on behalf of the GRASS user community, that the 
> ownership of the software and source code lies, jointly, with the known 
> user/contributor community as in evidence on this list and in the 
> various files recording contributors over time. He asserts that the 
> ownership statement derives in part from his moderating the development 
> debate and process and from the development process itself. He gieves 
> the history of the "ownership and makes clear the the justification for 
> the claim we are making. He does so in several forums where GIS and RS 
> is discussed. 

This is the way to go, (if we do not get better information on GRASS
ownership.) Baylor already claimed ownership.

> 2./ We wait for about two weeks. Marcus then further asserts that the 
> community intends to licence the software under the GPL or whatever 
> licence seems to be the consensus by then. 
> 3./ While we wait for alternative assertions of ownership of GRASS , 
> interested parties gieve the executive summary of the benefits of the 
> licence they favour. Bernard, could you give us a short point form 
> summary of the benefits of the GPL in a post?  

I am certainly willing to do that. Though I have the feeling that
I will repeat myself.
  http://earth.uni-muenster.de/~eicksch/GRASS-Help/msg02105.html          
  http://earth.uni-muenster.de/~eicksch/GRASS-Help/msg02195.html          

Most important:
	GRASS should be free software.

Second: 
	It is very important to choose a well known free software
	license, so that developers and contributors 
	know what they talk about right away.

Third: 
	There are a couple of free software licenses. 
	http://www.opensource.org/licenses/

	The GPL(aka copyleft) imposes the most restrictions
	in order to prevent long term abuse of any kind and 
	in several situations. It is a very sound license, because
	it worked in several cases (NeXT Inc and their Objective-C
	compiler comes to mind.) and it is widely used.
	(Which it was not tested in court, because the NeXT lawyer
	though they would loose.)

	All other licenses are have less restrictions and therefore
	less restrictions. Mostly because they want companies and 
	other people to use the code freely. This means they allow 
	companies to close up improved version of the source and make 
	them proprietory.  Some licenses are made to reserve more rights 
	for a major company dealing with the source, like the MPL
	(netscape) or the QPL (TrollTech).

	
> 5./ We set a day for a vote on the preferred forms and then authorise 
> Marcus Neteler to take action on behalf of the user/maintainer 
> community. 
I am not sure that voting will help here.

	Bernhard

-- 
Research Assistant, Geog Dept UM-Milwaukee, USA.    (www.uwm.edu/~bernhard)
Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure              (ffii.org)
Intevation GmbH 
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