Cameron, Everyone
[was: Re: Asking permission for re-licensing from LGPL to Apache on the
OSGeo board list]
I am not a lawyer of course. I do work with some really good ones. Like
each of you, I do listen, learn, and try to pick up what I can to
educate myself.
Stating it plainly, there are noteworthy firms that have sufficient
concerns about LGPL that they will strive to avoid it. These are
respected firms such as Nokia
<http://bill.burkecentral.com/2010/05/19/apache-damaging-to-open-source/>,
Lockheed Martin
<http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/openlayers-dev/2012-March/008552.html>, IBM
<http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/www-legal-discuss/200508.mbox/%3cofa81bc35a.1032fa31-on04257059.00629855-04257059.00645...@us.ibm.com%3E>,
Oracle
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/08/oracle_bea_gpl_lgpl_code_check/>,
and many others.
It's about friction. The IBM link above is a good one to review and
consider in this regard.
The Eclipse Foundation, and by extension the LocationTech
<http://wiki.eclipse.org/LocationTech> working group are designed
carefully to minimize such friction while simultaneously balancing
benefits to projects. These policies seem to be reasonably effective
based on the success of Eclipse software.
The Eclipse Public License is a central part of reducing friction while
maintaining balance for the project's well being and interests. It is a
weak copyleft license. In short:
1. If you modify EPL code and redistribute, you are obligated to share
the changes.
2. If you build on top of EPL software, your own software can be
licensed under your own license of choice (assuming no license
conflicts)
3. You can also re-license the finished product under a commercial
license of your choice
LocationTech also allows other business friendly licenses like MIT, BSD,
and Apache.
In our license choices, IP policy, and other processes we're trying to
ensure things don't needlessly hinder projects from being adopted by
anyone and especially those people who might help you make a living from it.
Andrew
On 07/26/2012 06:48 PM, Cameron Shorter wrote:
Andrew Ross,
I think it would be very valuable for you to expand the forum of your
discussion about OSGeo/LocationTech, licences, and all things come
under that banner.
In particular, I think it should be discussed on osgeo-discuss.
One of the first questions that I think needs to be debated is "Why
Eclipse believes in the license it supports (and in particular, why
there are concerns with LGPL)"
I think there are many developers (such as myself) who would question
their previous choice of LGPL, based upon further legal advice you
have mentioned to me.
Andrew, you may wish to CC the osgeo discuss list in your reply to
this email.
On 27/07/2012 8:10 AM, Martin Desruisseaux wrote:
Board
As suggested, we posted our request on the GeoTools mailing list
(http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=29572383). The
GeoTools PMC had a meeting Monday, which resulted in 2 "inclined yes"
votes, 2 "inclined no" votes and one proposal to re-license GeoTools
too. We do not know yet the final GeoTools PMC decision, neither we
saw any reply to our request from the OSGeo board. Consequently I
would like to recall a few points, and make one proposal (note: my
willing is not to create contentious, but to insist on open source
spirit in a context where two projects are facing strategic steps):
1. We granted copyright to OSGeo, not to GeoTools.
2. When we granted copyright, we understood that OSGeo would have
the duty to behave according its charter, which is not to protect
the economical interests of some members or to favour one
particular project at the expense of an other project.
3. We were willing to trim every code not written by ourselves
(while of course we prefer not having to - see proposal below).
4. GeoTools contains thousands of lines of code written by ourselves
- when we left, we were the authors of 40% of GeoTools 2.6 code base.
5. If OSGeo requires GeoTools permission for re-licensing our code,
then conversely we assume that GeoTools needs our agreement for
re-licensing our above-cited work.
Considering that some peoples considered to re-license GeoTools as
part of their plan to join LocationTech (Eclipse), we would like to
reach an agreement around the following proposal: OSGeo allows
re-licensing of the full Geotoolkit.org code base to Apache 2,
including the work derived from other contributors in GeoTools 2.6
(as of 2008, it was 5% of lines of code in the "core" modules and an
undetermined percentage in the "pending" modules - we can compute
this number if it is considered necessary for reaching an agreement).
In return, we give our agreement for re-licensing any work we
committed on the GeoTools SVN (both OSGeo and SourceForge), at any
time in the history under any license that the GeoTools PMC wishes.
From an "amount of lines of code" point of view, I don't think that
GeoTools would be deserved by such deal.
Martin
Le 20/07/12 23:37, Cameron Shorter a écrit :
Martin, board,
(talking as a non-board member)
I recommend that the course of action should be:
1. Note that OSGeo's commitment is to support projects, and support
Open Source use for projects.
2. Note that there are 2 projects with a vested interest in this
decision, GeoTools and Geotoolkit.
3. Note that the board would in principle be in a position to
support Geotoolkit's request, as it is a request to use an Open
Source licence (which part of OSGeo's charter)
4. However, before making a decision, the board, and/or Martin,
should approach the GeoTools community, and ask for comment, in
particular ask the GeoTools community if there are any grounds for
objection which might revolve around how GeoTools might be adversely
effected by such a license change.
_______________________________________________
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--
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Solutions Manager
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254
Think Globally, Fix Locally
Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source
http://www.lisasoft.com
--
*Andrew Ross*
Director, Ecosystems
Eclipse Foundation <http://eclipse.org>
Twitter: @42aross <http://twitter.com/42aross>
Mobile: 1-613-614-5772
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