[QGIS-Developer] iOS prototyping

[Tim Sutton]

Hi

> On 30 Oct 2018, at 00:44, Nyall Dawson <nyall.dawson at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> 


> 
> Ideally I'd agree with the sentiment here, but a large number of our
> developers can't attend these hackfests. (And as witnessed by the bug
> tracker discussion this leads to lack of ownership of a decision by
> those not in attendance).
> 
> Maybe something like this would be a possible approach:
> 
> 1. PSC discuss whether this is something they want to pursue as an
> organisation or not. If not, end of discussion.

Agreed - QGIS.org needs to decide whether it wants to hold all the copyright for the QGIS code base.

> 2. Create a QEP page for central discussion on the point. Advertisie
> initially on mailing lists.

Agreed

> 3. When enough discussion (and hopefully, consensus) has been reached
> on a possible approach, send a link to the QEP discussion to all known
> contributors for wider feedback. If no consensus, end of discussion.

Agreed

> 4. If there is general approval amongst contributors  AND is appears
> to be possible to advance then PSC/org get legal advise before
> proceeding. If not legally possible, end of discussion.

Maybe this step is better done up front - pointless writing QEP’s etc if we don’t have the legal capacity to be the rights owner. Though I would expect this is a formality and would be very surprised if QGIS.org could not be the rights owner...


> 5. Formalise the proposal into some legally binding agreement

Agreed, 

> 6. Get voting members to vote on proposal (maybe 5/6 would be
> flipped?). If vote is declined, end of discussion.

Are they voting that they are OK with QGIS.org holding the rights? I would make it 5/6 of actual votes to prevent voter apathy killing the initiative….


> 7. Get existing contributors to sign the agreement.

As mentioned I would make it 'contributors of what is in a snapshot of the current codebase'. We do this by making a fork with no revision history and leave the existing repo with current GPL license and revision history intact. Then we only contact devs who have code in the fork.

> (8. Replace existing code from any non-signing contributors)


Agreed

> 9. Put process in place for new contributors to agree to agreement
> before contributions are allowed.

Agreed: We can automate the process by using a tool like: https://github.com/cla-assistant/cla-assistant (I think there are a few of them out there)...


> 
> I realise that this is a long and potentially difficult path, but many
> other projects have successfully navigated it. And I think we should
> at least explore it, if for no other reason then to know if we never
> need to have this discussion again :)


I have often thought about this over the years - no particularly for iOS which spawned the discussion, but to remove a huge roadblock for us ever pragmatically tweaking our license.

If the above path fails, I think there are other things we could do, like introducing this non-retrospectively, so that any new code coming in is ceded to QGIS.org ownership and we leave whatever is in the code base as-is. Devs could cede their previous work to QGIS.org on an individual basis if they want to. Over time the bulk of the code may naturally become the copyright of QGIS.org (think version 10 here…)


Thanks for the nice breakdown Nyall…

Regards

Tim



> 
> Nyall
> 
> 
>> Thanks Nyall for the suggestion.
>> 
>> --
>> Paolo Cavallini - www.faunalia.eu <http://www.faunalia.eu/>
>> QGIS.ORG <http://qgis.org/> Chair:
>> http://planet.qgis.org/planet/user/28/tag/qgis%20board/ <http://planet.qgis.org/planet/user/28/tag/qgis%20board/>
>> 
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—








Tim Sutton

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

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