[SeasonOfDocs] TheGoodDocsProject: Finding a legal entity to assign license ownership to

[Erin McKean]

If all contributions are licensed under CC-BY or CC-0 or 0BSD then there's
no remaining copyright issues afaik (since the relevant rights have been
released under the license)? (Obligatory IANAL here)

I will ask, but probably won't be able to until I'm back from OSCON ...

Thanks!

Erin

On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 1:22 PM Eric Holscher <eric at writethedocs.org> wrote:

> Makes sense. In my experience, companies are more worried about the
> license of the content than the copyright (most OSS in general is owned by
> private individuals or other corporations). WTD doesn't own any source code
> historically of value that we'd want to relicense, so copyright ownership
> hasn't been something we've been worried about.
>
> Cheers,
> Eric
>
> On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 1:03 PM Cameron Shorter <cameron.shorter at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Thanks Eric for the info,
>>
>> It is a pity WriteTheDocs isn't a non-profit, but I understand the
>> challenges with setting up a not-for-profit - the OSGeo Foundation went
>> through a lot of heartache going through the process.
>>
>> While it would be great if were legally under the umbrella of
>> WriteTheDocs, I suspect that being under the umbrella of a not-for-profit
>> entity will be important for potential contributors from big companies.
>>
>> I'm open to suggestions on who we should reach out to here.
>>
>> Cheers, Cameron
>> On 17/7/19 3:32 am, Eric Holscher wrote:
>>
>> WTD info is documented here:
>> http://www.writethedocs.org/about-us/#legal-entity -- so, if you're
>> looking for a non-profit organization, we're not one at the moment. It
>> might be in the cards eventually, but it likely doesn't make sense for us
>> currently.
>>
>> We don't do any copyright assignment, so each person owns their own
>> contributions on our site.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Eric
>>
>> On Sat, Jul 13, 2019 at 6:54 PM Cameron Shorter <
>> cameron.shorter at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Folks,
>>> We should consider which legal entity will own the material we create.
>>> People or a legal entity will own artifacts we create and others can use
>>> the artifact under the terms of the license.
>>>
>>> As I understand it, our options are:
>>> * Every contributor owns their personal contribution. This makes it very
>>> difficult to relicense a collective work in future, which has pros and cons.
>>> * More common is to assign ownership to a trustworthy non-profit
>>> foundation, (such as the Apache Foundation, Open Source Foundation, or Open
>>> Source Geospatial Foundation).
>>>
>>> I'm in favour of selecting a suitable foundation to assign our copyright
>>> to and would like to hear suggestions. I suspect the legal structure behind
>>> WriteTheDocs would be good.
>>>
>>> Eric, Jennifer, do you know the legal status of WriteTheDocs? Or are you
>>> able to put us in touch with someone who knows?
>>>
>>> --
>>> Cameron Shorter
>>> Technology Demystifier
>>> Open Technologies and Geospatial Consultant
>>>
>>> M +61 (0) 419 142 254
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> --
>> Co-founder Write the Docs
>> http://www.writethedocs.org
>>
>> --
>> Cameron Shorter
>> Technology Demystifier
>> Open Technologies and Geospatial Consultant
>>
>> M +61 (0) 419 142 254
>>
>>
>
> --
> Co-founder Write the Docs
> http://www.writethedocs.org
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-- 
Erin McKean | Developer Relations Program Manager, Open Source Strategy |
emckean at google.com | she/her
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