[QGIS-Developer] iOS prototyping

Mon Nov 19 01:34:16 PST 2018

Thanks for your great inputs Matthias. Yes we (Nyall and myself)  probably used some alarming words at the start of the thread like ‘MIT’….but to all reading don’t get sidetracked by that on focus rather on the idea that QGIS as a project should be able to meet future challenges and adapt to them. While some people made dismissive comments about one platform or another, don’t let your personal bias towards or against a platform cloud the issue. If our goal is to make QGIS available only on a platform that we like we miss the point of making a mass appeal GIS that everyone can run on their preferred device. I would far prefer a situation where QGIS.org holds the ability to change licence (think micro-tweaks rather than all out change to MIT or some other license) to meet with changing times. If we want to achieve that, we need to start sooner or later getting past and present contributors to assign their work to QGIS.org. In my mind this is exactly the kind of reason we went to all the trouble of creating QGIS.org and we should use the organisation to our combined benefit. Even if we cannot get every developer to sign over their code to QGIS.org, over time the delta between signed over code and non signed over code will get small enough that we can replace code that isn’t signed over if needed …..

Regards

Tim

> On 16 Nov 2018, at 15:20, Matthias Kuhn <matthias at opengis.ch> wrote:
> 
> Am I too late for the party? Probably.
> 
> Anyway...
> 
> From what I can see there are different sides to this discussion:
> 
> * Is a (potential) license change feasible
> 
> This question is very hard to answer since there are a lot of
> stakeholders and uncertainties attached to it.
> 
> I don't know, apparently it has successfully been done before on other
> projects (see VLC). I'm not gonna go into much more detail here, as I
> don't think I'll be able to help much in finding a final answer here.
> The only way to find this answer will be to actually try.
> 
> * Is a (potential) license change something we want
> 
> This is a question to be answered from each developer's individual
> standpoint.
> 
> There are so many things in QGIS, where the project structures (with
> PSC, voting members and community involved) play a huge rule in what I
> do and what happens to the code I wrote. As you all know, I'm still
> around, so you can interpret that I am in general happy with what's
> happening. All in all, I have a huge trust in these structures. In fact,
> I think I tell people similarly often how proud I am of our projects
> structures as I tell them about how proud I am of the product itself. I
> truly believe, that these structures are sustainable enough to withstand
> an unfriendly takeover.
> 
> The past has also shown, that forks kept in private (n.b. in a GPL
> compliant way) could not stop the main and completely open QGIS to be
> the thing that people actually want. The most important part license
> wise for me is, that QGIS is freely available for anyone on whatever
> platform wherever he may be and that he is able to use its functionality
> and adjust it to his needs if he wishes to do so.
> 
> Given that, I would seriously consider to give the PSC the power to
> adjust the license for good reasons. Ask me and you'll have good chances
> to get that. At least I know that in the "worst case" and (totally
> unexpected) abuse of those rights we're still be able to fork under the
> GPL terms.
> 
> Last but not least, a license has been chosen by a person or a group of
> people at a given point in time. Knowledge at this point in time by the
> people in charge is what is taken into account when choosing a license.
> The outside world can move on and change and new requirements to
> licenses can come up which are not covered by the original license.
> 
> An example: it should be possible to provide QGIS as a service via a
> remote desktop like cloud platform and change whatever you want without
> being forced to publish the source code with the current license (Note:
> I'm not a lawyer). At the same time it's really hard to distribute QGIS
> based public code to Apple tablets with the current license (Note: I'm
> not a lawyer). Personally I'd prefer things to be vice versa.
> 
> Best regards
> 
> Matthias
> 
> On 11/10/18 3:55 PM, Greg Troxel wrote:
> 
>> Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it> writes:
>> 
>>> thanks for this discussion. I'm also pretty sure getting a property
>>> transfer from all developers will be difficult if not impossible (quite
>>> a few devs even disappeared from the radar, not easy to find them again).
>>> 
>>> A possible intermediate step would be to:
>>> 
>>> * get the transfer of code property to QGIS.ORG only from those
>>> developers who are happy to do it
>> That makes sense, but wrapped up in that question is:
>> 
>>  what is the reciprocal covenant about future licensing that goes with
>>  the copyright assignment?
>> 
>> or perhaps you really mean "assignment with no reciprocal covenant at
>> all, from those who are happy to do it".
>> 
>> The FSF assignment form that my company executed long ago (for
>> contributions to GNU Radio) had a covenant to make the code available
>> under Free licenses (and I can't remember the exact details), plus a
>> grant back to the contributor of a license under copyright law.
>> 
>> This text is old, but is an example
>> 
>>  The Foundation promises that all distribution of the Work, or of any
>>  work "based on the Work," that takes place under the control of the
>>  Foundation or its assignees, shall be on terms that explicitly and
>>  perpetually permit anyone possessing a copy of the work to which the
>>  terms apply, and possessing accurate notice of these terms, to
>>  redistribute copies of the work to anyone on the same terms. These
>>  terms shall not restrict which members of the public copies may be
>>  distributed to. These terms shall not require a member of the public
>>  to pay any royalty to the Foundation or to anyone else for any
>>  permitted use of the work they apply to, or to communicate with the
>>  Foundation or its agents in any way either when redistribution is
>>  performed or on any other occasion.
>> 
>>> * ask a more specific question to others (e.g. are you willing to move
>>> from GPL2 to GPL3?).
>>> 
>>> I think this is more feasible, will help building trust, will help
>>> moving forward, and will make it easier (less people to contact) to do
>>> further changes in the future.
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—

Tim Sutton

Co-founder: Kartoza
Ex Project chair: QGIS.org

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