[Mapbender-dev] Copyright Assignment

[Marc Jansen]

Hi Arnulf,
hi devs,

I (without knowing too much about the legal stuff) think the option with 
copyright transfer to the OSGeo  might be the best choice.  I read the 
document  you suggested in IRC 
(http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Individual_Contributor_License_Agreement_%28CLA%29) 
and personally think this sounds well.

What is the deal with single files that currently have the copyright 
header set to something else than CCGIS?

Bye,

-- Marc


Arnulf Christl schrieb:
> Hi All,
> there is some legal stuff that we need to attend to. It is a dry topic 
> so bear with me and I will try to make it as painless as possible. 
> After we all understand the involved issues we should proceed to 
> decide on how to go on.
> Mapbender sources are protected by the GNU GPL license. The initial 
> code was release by the company CCGIS Christl & Stamm GbR who is also 
> the copyright of Mapbender code. As CCGIS merged with two other 
> companies to form the new WhereGroup GmbH & Co. KG. the Copyright now 
> lies with the owners of the WhereGroup. But it does not say so in the 
> sources.
> Now there are several options what we can do about this.
> * Leave as is (not recommended)
> * Change the header in all files and license texts to say WhereGroup 
> GmbH & Co. KG (makes sense but there is no explicitly good reason to 
> do it either)
> * Assign the copyright to OSGeo, change headers accordingly (recommended)
>
> We (CCGIS and now the WhereGroup) intentionally kept (almost) all code 
> under CCGIS/WhereGroup because it makes things a lot easier than with 
> several individual copyright holders. In the latter case it becomes 
> very difficult to do change the license or the copyright (see the 
> GeoTools example below) or protect developers (something that a 
> Foundation could do) or sue license offenders (something that we would 
> probably never *want* to do either).
>
> The name of the copyright holder (CCGIS) is not attached to a legal 
> entity anymore (effectively as of the end of this year) we should 
> reflect this in the code header and license texts.
> Therefore the WhereGroup has decided to assign the copyright to the 
> Open Source Geospatial Foundation, something that other projects (for 
> example GeoTools) is also trying to do. They have a lot more issues 
> because unfortunately their copyright is owned by "the developers" 
> which is not a legal entity. They now have trouble assigning copyright 
> to a legal entity because they are not a legal entity. Therefore they 
> are currently working on a document (still pending) that will assign 
> copyright to OSGeo (look for CLA in the OSGeo Wiki). 
> Our position is much clearer because we don't have the copyright 
> distributed all over the place. We (the WhereGroup and some of the 
> developers that I have already talked to individually) would like to 
> go this way and assign copyright to OSGeo and be done with it.
> Well. I thought this would look more coherent! Friday evening is not 
> the best time to start a thread  about this kind of stuff but before I 
> throw it away again please give it a thought. Maybe you can just write 
> to this list and share your opinions ask questions make suggestions 
> word your qualms or whatever.
> Best regards, Arnulf.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Mapbender_dev mailing list
> Mapbender_dev at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/mapbender_dev
>