[Incubator] Re: GeoMajas Graduation Recommendation

Wed Oct 6 05:05:53 EDT 2010

  Hi,

I'll try to answer your questions to the best of my abilities.

Op 5/10/2010 17:57, Julien-Samuel Lacroix schreef:
> Hi,
>
> Congratulation, your incubation documentation and code provenance 
> review are quite detailed. My only questions are:
>
> - Can you confirm that Geosparc has a signed contract/legal document 
> that assign IP of the work done by Mathias Versichele to Geosparc? I 
> guess it's not a big deal since he only worked on 2 test files, but I 
> thought I'd ask anyway.
Every employee has signed a contract. Although I would have to ask our 
accountant for Mathias' contract, I know that such a clause is on my 
contract with Geosparc, as with all other employees.
>
> - Can you confirm that Dirk Frigne is on the PSC, but not an author 
> and didn't signed a CLA? It doesn't matter, just wanted to make sure I 
> understood correctly. He probably just gives opinion and ideas I guess 
> or is the architect.
Dirk is not a developer, but the visionary behind the Geomajas project 
and founder of Geosparc. He has an extensive technical background, so is 
able to give insight on many levels. This is his main role now; to give 
insight using his extended experience.
>
> - What is the mechanism to reproduce the licence of BSD licenced 
> packages from your dependency list? There's a note in your document, 
> but I'm not sure to understand the implications. Is there any?
All parts of Geomajas (back-end, faces, plug-ins) have to declare their 
dependencies including the copyright and license information.
When the application context is started, the copyright information is 
output in the logs (by default this is on the console).

At run-time, the about box also displays the copyright information for 
all dependencies.
Also, a face needs to have an about box with copyright information 
display to be able to graduate within the Geomajas project.
>
> - Do CDDL licenced packages mix well with your AGPL3 licence? There's 
> a file (javax.persistence:persistence-api:jar:1.0) that as no comment 
> about it.
Obviously I am not a lawyer, but...
- I have found javax.persistence packages using many licenses including 
CDDL and LGPL (as noted in the provenance document).
- if javax.persistence is not xGPL compatible many projects like 
Hibernate have a problem.
- The incompatibility as claimed by the FSF is about the "choice of 
venue" clause. This does not limit the freedom of use of the code but is 
about the place where any court action would take place. Note that FSF 
is not always considered the "final word" on licenses. The java world 
happely considers LGPL as usable in non-OSS apps (though probably not 
when combining jars), while the FSF says that LGPL=GPL in the Java world...
- less valid, but still, all other SUN/JCP APIs are dual licensed as 
CDDL/GPL
>
> Sorry I'm not familiar with CDDL licences. Is it:
> http://www.opensource.org/licenses/cddl1.php
>
> I think all of those are details, so congratulation everything is 
> really clear.
>
> Julien
>
> PS: This is probably not incubation related:
> You have a dual licencing model (AGPL and Commercial through Geosparc) 
> which is ok. Is there things I can't do with the AGPL version (except 
> from not contributing my changes back)?
No, Geosparc simply provides commercial licenses in case a customer 
would want to get rid of the AGPL requirements.
>
> On 10-10-05 10:23 AM, Pieter De Graef wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I would like to thank Paul from the bottom of my heart.
>> He has done a lot for the project and made it possible for Geomajas to
>> enter incubation and propose for graduation in less then a year. Without
>> him we would not be where we are now.
>>
>> Also, I would like to invite you all to test Geomajas for yourselves in
>> order to get a better feeling of what it does and where it stands. Any
>> and all comments may help to improve upon the project.
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Pieter De Graef
>>
>>
>>
>> Op 5/10/2010 16:10, Paul Spencer schreef:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I would like to recommend to the Incubation Committee that we consider
>>> GeoMajas for graduation from incubation. The relevant documentation
>>> can be found at:
>>>
>>> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/GeoMajas_Incubation_Status
>>> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/GeoMajas_Provenance_Review
>>>
>>> The GeoMajas community consists of about 9 regular committers and a
>>> fairly active user community. The development community seems
>>> responsive to the users. The project has recently released version
>>> 1.7.1 which represents a very complete and professional GIS package
>>> for the java community. There is sufficient documentation to allow
>>> even a non-java guy like myself to get it running.
>>>
>>> There were no major issues for GeoMajas during incubation. Upon
>>> entering incubation, they already had a suitable PSC structure, mature
>>> development and user communities and development practices consistent
>>> with OSGeo principles. Over past 7 months or so, I have been observing
>>> the functioning of the PSC via the user and developer mailing lists
>>> and I believe the PSC functions in a manner consistent with other
>>> OSGeo projects.
>>>
>>> The code provenance review was completely moderately quickly due to
>>> existing code documentation practices. Outstanding issues of
>>> significance have been addressed.
>>>
>>> I believe that GeoMajas will make a great addition to the OSGeo stack
>>> and will represent the OSGeo community well.
>>>
>>> I invite folks to provide feedback, comments and discussion for the
>>> next week or two, at which time we will proceed with a formal motion.
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>>
>>> Paul
>>>
>>> __________________________________________
>>>
>>> Paul Spencer
>>> Chief Technology Officer
>>> DM Solutions Group Inc
>>> http://research.dmsolutions.ca/
>>>
>>>
>>
>

-- 
Pieter De Graef

Community Manager
GeoSparc nv.
http://www.geosparc.com/

Chairman of the Geomajas project
http://www.geomajas.org/