Frank Warmerdam wrote:
Adrian Custer wrote:
Hey all,
This is an attempt to clarify the situation for Geotools documentation
going forward.
We apparently have two choices for the User Guide (aka Programmers'
Manual):
1) Add each contributor to the copyright list, holding the
copyright in common and license the whole document under the
FDL.
2) Assign copyright to the PMC or OSGeo and have them license
the document to the general public under the FDL.
The main advantage of the latter is that it becomes possible for the
project to change its mind as to the details of the license, something
which may become important as the FDL comes to be better understood.
This second approach seems to be the one taken by the Developers Guide.
Here is the copyright statement from the Developers Guide:
Copyright (c) 2004 Geotools Project Management Committee (PMC).
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License,
Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software
Foundation; with the Invariant Sections being with no Invariant
Sections, with the Front-Cover Texts being no Front-Cover Texts,
and with the Back-Cover Texts being no Back-Cover Texts.
Given that the PMC is considered *not* to have sufficient legal standing
for code copyright assignment, I presume the same is true for the docs.
Will the OSGeo be able to receive copyright assignment for the docs? Is
there any particular proceedure we need to follow to assign this
copyright and to receive assignment from third parties?
Adrian,
I would encourage having the same copyright holder for the documentation as
for the source code for simplicity of management. While the PMC has
questionable legal standing as a copyright holder, as long as the code
is that way, perhaps the docs also ought to be.
Is use of FDL Geotools policy for docs? I don't know a lot about
document licenses, but the OSGeo board is using one of the creative
commons licenses instead of FDL specifically because the FDL was seen
as overly complicated and so it is hard to understand the issues. And
this was Rich Steele, the lawyer who made the suggestion.
I don't think there's been much discussion about FDL, at least none that
I remember. I believe I'd prefer some type of Creative Commons license,
based on recommendations of several people I respect. I think we should
put the issue to the PMC
PS. I do think the "PMC as copyright holder" issue again with Rich. I
believe GRASS is in the same position of having a non-legal entity
declared as holding the copyright.
I've been meaning to raise this issue, as I'd like to have GeoTools
copyright assigned to the OSGeo foundation, where it has good legal
protection. I'll try to raise it as a more formal motion soon.
But if we're deciding on the user guide, that should be a bit easier,
I'd say start it assigned to OSGeo, with a CC license (I'm fine with
just attribution, I can do share-alike if others also want that).
Chris
Best regards,
--
Chris Holmes
The Open Planning Project
http://topp.openplans.org
begin:vcard
fn:Chris Holmes
n:Holmes;Chris
org:The Open Planning Project
adr:;;377 Broadway, 11th Floor;New York;NY;10013;USA
email;internet:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
title:VP, Strategic Development
x-mozilla-html:FALSE
url:http://topp.openplans.org
version:2.1
end:vcard
_______________________________________________
Geotools-devel mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geotools-devel
