[Incubator] Copyright held by non-legal entities

[Frank Warmerdam]

rich at richsteele.org wrote:
 > Frank wrote:
>> Currently most of the Geotools code has the copyright held by the
>> "Geotools PMC", which has no legal existence as far as I know.  How
>> much of a problem is this likely to be?
> 
> A non-entity can't hold copyright, so the copyright is still vested in 
> the individual creators of the code.  Did prior creators sign a 
> purported copyright assignment to the "Geotools PMC"?

Rich,

I don't believe they signed any copyright assignment to the PMC.

> Are we talking about an actual assignment of the copyright to OSGeo, or 
> simply a license?  Either way, the PMC members and previous 
> members/contributors should sign a copyright assignment form or a broad 
> license agreement (ie., the contributor agreement)

Could you point us at a sample copyright assignment form that we could
use?  We were thinking of copyright assignment in this case I believe.

I'd also like to proceed with copyright assignment for my code in GDAL.

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    | President OSGF, http://osgeo.org