[Incubator] Incubation Committee meeting Monday 17th

[Frank Warmerdam]

On 12-01-25 09:42 PM, Daniel Morissette wrote:
> 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.

Daniel,

I believe the rationale behind avoiding the term Intellectual Property
has two parts.

First, it attempts to conflate a variety of very different legal mechanisms.
Primarily copyright, patents and trademarks.  Giving them all one name makes
it harder to separate out things we might agree with (copyright) from things
we might not (ie. Patents).

Second, it expresses these legal mechanisms in a manner that implies that
they are some sort of fundamental or manifest right rather than limited
government granted monopolies intended to serve specific needs of society.

While I support copyright with limitations as a way to encourage production
of valuable cultural artifacts including books, music and software, I don't
wish to buy into copyright as a fundamental human right.

OSGeo is generally a pragmatic organization and I'm not suggesting we take
a strong position I would be more comfortable if we did not encode the
term "Intellectual Property" into our core documents as I believe it
provides a kind of cover and support for a doctrine that is damaging to
society and to me.

This is why in the past in incubation documents I avoided it.  Instead I
think of the provenance review and an effort to ensure that code is
contributed to projects only by those with the legal rights to do so.

All that said, I'm keen on trying to fight the "Intellectual Property"
term as politically incorrect in general use.  I'm mainly interested
in keeping it out of formal OSGeo documents.

/me returns to service to trying-not-to-be-evil-mega-corp.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://home.gdal.org/warmerda
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Software Developer