Hey-
Not sure if this is well understood or has been covered here before.
I'm curious about the role of the foundation in licensing code for
distribution.
If an OSGeo project assigns copyright to OSGeo, I imagine it is OSGeo
that ultimately makes the decision on how to license the code for
distribution. I'm not sure *who* exactly OSGeo is in this context.
The incubation process ensures that code "is under an OSI approved
license" [1]. I haven't seen any other information on who makes
decisions about (re)licensing the code after incubation - and I'm
interested only in the case where OSGeo holds copyright.
Without knowing any of the legal details, what I would like to see is
some arrangement by which the Project Steering Committee for a
particular project becomes part of the foundation in some way, so that
the PSC has the responsibility of making licensing decisions for the
project. I imagine this would happen with some constraints from the
foundation (e.g. OSI approved licenses only)
I know that in practice, this is probably the way things already are.
Why rock the boat? Why assign copyright to OSGeo in the first place [2]?
Tim
[1] http://www.osgeo.org/incubator/process/evaluation.html
[2] My answer would include "because it gives legal status to the PSC
that allows it to make licensing decisions for the project."
--
Tim Schaub
OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
Expert service straight from the developers.
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