[OpenLayers-Dev] [Fwd: [OpenLayers-PSC] Two proposals: Copyright in Source, Corporate Copyright in Authors]

[Tim Schaub]

Hey-

The Project Steering Committee has been discussing some issues with our 
Contributor License Agreement and code copyright.  While there are 
associated issues that might follow from this, we are at the point where 
we'll be voting on proposals to change the copyright statement in the 
code source and the authors file we maintain.

The bottom line is that by signing our CLA, contributors do not assign 
copyright to anyone.  Instead, our CLA is about granting a license to 
the project maintainer (MetaCarta).  It follows from this that the 
copyright to OpenLayers is collectively held by the individuals and 
corporations that signed contributor agreements.

Thanks to Chris for his careful work deciphering things.  Below are 
summaries of his two proposals that we will be voting on (full message 
at the bottom).

1. Copyright in Source
----------------------

Change all source files and other copyright statements to read 
"Copyright OpenLayers Contributors" instead of "Copyright MetaCarta, 
Inc."  In addition, include the URL for the authors file in the 
copyright statement.


2. Corporations in Authors File
-------------------------------

Where we have signed CCLA documents from contributors, include the 
Corporation name along with the individual's name in the authors.txt file.

e.g.

James Bond (Her Majesty's Secret Service)


Thanks for voting.  And again, thanks to Chris for careful deductive work.

I'm +1 on both proposals.

Tim

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [OpenLayers-PSC] Two proposals: Copyright in Source,  Corporate 
Copyright in Authors
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2009 10:14:28 -0500
From: Christopher Schmidt <crschmidt at metacarta.com>
To: psc at openlayers.org

Hi,

Two proposals. Please vote on each individually.

----

Currently, the OpenLayers source files say "Copyright MetaCarta, Inc." with
a date. This is not correct; since we only have a license to code from
our contributors, and not the actual copyright of it, we should instead
change this text from:

/* Copyright (c) 2006-2008 MetaCarta, Inc., published under the Clear BSD
  * license.  See http://svn.openlayers.org/trunk/openlayers/license.txt 
for the
  * full text of the license. */

to

/* Copyright (c) 2006-2009 OpenLayers Contributors, published under the 
Clear
  * BSD license.  See 
http://svn.openlayers.org/trunk/openlayers/license.txt for
  * the full text of the license. */

I am in favor of this change. (+1)

----

Currently, our doc/authors.txt list does not identify the corporate entities
associated with contributors during the time which they made contributions
to OpenLayers. (Essentially, tying a CCLA to a person.) Since the code
copyright actually belongs in part to these organizations, I recommend that
we do our best to fix this situation, by doing our best to associate users
in the d oc/authors.txt with their corporate parents where appropriate.

For example, this might look like:

Christopher Schmidt (MetaCarta)
Tim Schaub (OpenGeo)
Schuyler Erle (MetaCarta, Entropy Free)

I am in favor of this change. (+1)

Best Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
MetaCarta
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-- 
Tim Schaub
OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
Expert service straight from the developers.