[Incubator] reminder about contribution agreements

[Jody Garnett]

Just in case new projects ever need a reminder to take contribution agreements seriously :D 

I am about 80% through reviewing issues found out of the uDig review for LocationTech, and a good third of the feedback requires me hunting down original organisations / authors. If Refractions had put up a contribution agreement for the project this would not be the case.

Context: When we started uDig LGPL was the *only* industry friendly license in common use and represented a safe bet. Now almost 10 years on this is no longer the case, LGPL is a neither loved by the FSF (too weak) or industry.

So have a look at contribution agreements, if not for today, but for your project in five years time.

If you want a nice clear example of a contribution license, the Apache Foundation does a good job (http://apache.org/licenses/), and you can see example of how we have this for use at OSGeo here (http://www.osgeo.org/content/foundation/legal/licenses.html).  

Note there is no requirement for OSGeo projects to use the foundation as a legal entity to hold onto the codebase for you, the offer is available if you need it.
-- 
Jody Garnett

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