OSGeo Contributor Agreement Review

[Daniel Morissette]

I am not a lawyer and may not fully understand the implications of the 
proposed CLA, but my first reaction is that I would not have a problem 
signing it for myself and Mapgears' contributions to MapServer *if* it 
is demonstrated that the CLA adds some value (and there seem to be some 
doubts on the real value that the CLA brings).

I understand the concerns of the GPL project contributors with respect 
to relicensing, but since my preference has always been for MIT/X11 
licenses, that's obviously not an issue for me.

Daniel


Steve Lime wrote:
> Since MapServer is MIT/X11 it is assumed that if you contribute code you
> do so under the project license- that does not seem to be an issue. However
> the relicensing rubs a lot people the wrong way. Someone commented 
> today that the MIT/X11 license basically allows relicensing anyway though.
> 
> I'd hate to do anything that would jepordize contributions...
> 
> Steve
> 
> 
>>>>Petter Reinholdtsen <pere at hungry.com> 03/20/06 4:24 PM >>>
> 
> [Steve Lime]
> 
>>Out of curiousity. How many folks would NOT sign such an agreement?
>>Would the mere presence of such a thing scared you away in the first
>>place?
> 
> 
> I would not be very willing, at least.  I read the FAQ, and my first
> reaction was two-fold:
> 
>  - The use of "intellectual property" in the text made me thing of
>    <URL:http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.xhtml>, and the fact
>    that there is not much patents, trademarks and copyright have in
>    common that is useful to generalize, and thus that the use of that
>    term is rubbing me the wrong way.
> 
>  - I am not generally willing to relicense my GPL work with a less
>    restrictive license.  If you want my help, you need to promise me
>    to give me your help, and if you want to use my code, I want to
>    make you legally required to give me your improvements.  Because of
>    this, I do not want to delegate the right to relicense my GPL code.
>    If I contribute to projects with other licenses, it is ok for my
>    contribution to use the same license as the project, but I do not
>    want projects to change license to some less restrictive license
>    without me having a say on the topic.
> 
> Not sure if my opinion should be given much weight, though.  After
> all, I am not doing much mapserver development, and only packaging it
> (and other GIS tools) for Debian. :)
> 
> Friendly,


-- 
Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/