[Incubator] Contributor agreements for Fusion project

[Cameron Shorter]

Daniel,
I think this is a good idea.

Regarding paperwork.
Is there anything wrong with storing all licence documents as a pdf, 
which is uploaded to a wiki or similar?
I imaging this would be much easier to maintain.

Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> Daniel Morissette wrote:
>> 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,
>
> People can assign contributions to OSGeo without OSGeo taking any action,
> so there is no harm in this.  As long as Tyler doesn't mind receiving and
> filing the agreements I see no harm in this happening without Fusion
> actually being in incubation or an official project.
>
> So, my claim would be that all you need is Tyler agreement to manage the
> documents which he can do on his own judgement.
>
> I am a bit surprised that the project would pursue contribution 
> agreements
> in advance of incubation.
>
> Best regards,


-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Systems Architect
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

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