[Incubator] labs project assigning copyright

[Frank Warmerdam]

Cameron Shorter wrote:
>>  o Projects wishing to assign copyright to the foundation should seek the
>>    agreement of the current OSGeo Secretary (currently Tyler), who if 
>> they
>>    are doubtful could seek input from the board.  For project in 
>> incubation
>>    or full OSGeo projects it should be automatic.
 >
> I think we need to include some guidelines on what projects OSGeo will 
> accept. Basically, projects can assign copyright to OSGeo if they plan 
> to eventually become OSGeo projects and conforming to the OSGeo 
> guidelines set out under OSGeo Labs.

Cameron,

Why do you think such guidelines are needed?  Who would interprete them?
It seems like the "cost" of collecting contribution agreements is very
small and there is relatively little downside to accepting them on
behalf of a project in which the foundation might have little interest.

If I were to propose guidelines it would be that this only be done
for projects with a geospatial connection and under an open source
license.

> I think that OSGeo labs should come under the responsibility of the 
> Incubation Committee, but am happy to bend on that point.

I'm agreeable, but not so certain that accepting contribution
agreements or copyright assignment needs to be related to OSGeo Labs.

>>  o Agreements should all be stored in scanned format in the OSGeo SVN.
>>    We can give out SVN commit access to one or two representatives of 
>> each
>>    project so they can actually add the agreements themselves after some
>>    vetting.
> I don't think we need to be prescriptive about where agreements are 
> stored, so long as they are stored somewhere. It may be on OSGeo svn, or 
> the project svn, or a wiki or similar.

As legal documents of the foundation, the Secretary is responsible for
keeping them available and under his/her administration.  I am suggesting
we control their location in part to ensure that the Secretary will be
aware of their storage, and so there are relatively few places that we
need to be sure of capturing to have the foundations legal documents.

In fact, I hope to also encourage scanning and storing in this fashion of
other foundation documents that are not confidential.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
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    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent