[Incubator] Contributor agreements for Fusion project

[Daniel Morissette]

Incubation committee,

The Fusion project is in the process of setting up contributor 
agreements 
(http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/fusion-dev/2008-August/000121.html). 
As some of you may be aware, the project is already hosted on OSGeo's 
Trac and SVN, and plans to go through incubation once it is more mature 
and organized.

A question that came up was whether OSGeo could handle the CLAs on 
behalf of the Fusion project from day one, instead of waiting until it 
has passed incubation... this would save the step of transferring the 
CLAs from another entity (likely DM Solutions) to OSGeo once the project 
has passed incubation.

The Fusion CLAs are based on the MapGuide/FDO ones which contain wording 
alluding to the Foundation as the project authority, so the question is 
not just whether OSGeo can handle the paperwork, but also if it is fine 
for the Fusion CLAs to make references to OSGeo as its project authority 
even if it has not passed incubation. See the MapGuide CLA for an 
example of what I mean:
http://mapguide.osgeo.org/files/Individual%20Contributor%20Agreement.pdf

This committee seems to be the best group in OSGeo to make the call on 
that. If we are not comfortable with that then the alternative is simply 
to handle CLAs through DM Solutions for now which is not a huge deal... 
and transfer them to OSGeo if/when Fusion passes incubation... this 
email is mostly to find out if it would be possible to save one step.

Daniel
-- 
Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/