[Incubator] Incubation Committee meeting Monday 17th

[Daniel Morissette]

On 12-01-13 7:00 PM, Arnulf Christl wrote:
>
> 2Ct sideways: ...if at all possible I would try to avoid using the term
> "Intellectual Property" in official statements because it is a malicious
> Meme. Simply by using it we subscribe to the concept. But Open Source
> does not function on "intellectual property" (if I ever have to use it,
> I at least put it in quotes).
>

Arnulf,

Either I disagree with your position or I do not understand your point.

Personally, I do not see FOSS in opposition to intellectual property. I 
actually see open sourcing code as maintaining ownership of your own 
intellectual property (copyright), and then applying an open license to 
the code to make it free to use/modify/redistribute by the community.

As a FOSS developer I am proud of the code I have written and that has 
my name on it (my intellectual property)... I never gave that code away 
nor my IP rights to it and never will, I just put a very open license on 
it. Yes, in some cases we assign copyright to an entity such as OSGeo, 
but once again the Intellectual Property continues to exist and is used 
to apply an open license and keep some control on the code. So even if 
the case of copyright assignment we do not give up our IP, it is only 
placed in the hands of an entity that you trust to do the right thing 
with it on your behalf.

So the concept of intellectual property becomes a tool. not a problem in 
my view.

My 0.02$

-- 
Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/
Provider of Professional MapServer Support since 2000