[PROJ] OSGeo incubation status

[Martin Desruisseaux]

Le 24/01/2020 à 13:46, Sebastiaan Couwenberg a écrit :

> Standards are notorious as well, not have the right to make 
> modifications makes them non-free as well. We have this issue with OGC 
> Document License works for example.
>
Right OGC document license is another topic to think about. A short 
discussion can be viewed on 
https://github.com/spdx/license-list-XML/issues/845 (OGC directory 
participated briefly). Actually that license does not forbid 
modifications, but it has a condition saying "if you modify it, then you 
must change the namespace". It is a little bit similar to an Apache 
license condition meaning "if you modify that software, then you can not 
call it "Apache" anymore - use any other name at your choice". Except 
that OGC document license goes one step further by requiring 
programmatic namespace change, not only product name change. If the 
files are XML, this means changing the XML namespace. If the files are 
Java interfaces, this means changing the Java module/package names. If 
the files were C++ headers, I guess it would mean changing the names 
that we specify in "using" statements. The OGC document license said 
that if the developer do such name change, then those files fall 
automatically under OGC software license, which is BSD-like.

OGC welcome feedback about OGC license issues, provided that we keep the 
goal of protecting standard integrity. I plan to start a discussion with 
Apache legal team on this topic later this year, to explore how the 
naming condition of OGC document license is acceptable (or not) to them, 
and bring those feedback to OGC. If OSGeo has feedback to provide too 
that would be good.

     Regards,

         Martin