Hello Everyone,
We are finally in a position to decide how we want to structure the
legal relationship between Geotools contributors and the OSGeo
foundation.
We must decide between:
(1) keeping things as they are,
(2) keeping things as they are, formalized with a legal document
stating what each of us intends and claims to be doing,
(3) making the OSGeo foundation the sole licensee of our
contributions under the condition that it will
a) immediately re-license the contributions aggregated
to us and everyone else under the LGPL for code, FDL for
docs and BSD for code examples (BSD being the most
liberal license we can have since there is no legal
mechanism to place the code in the public domain)
b) grant the contributors rights to their own work under
the BSD license (ie. give the contributors the full
right to do whatever they please with their own code),
or
(4) assigning our copyright to the OSGeo foundation under the
conditions 3a and 3b plus that OSGeo will
c) maintain the code under the LGPL or, following the
wishes of the Project Steering Group, under a free
license substantially similar to the LGPL.
We must then, under scenarios (2), (3) or (4), agree to a text amongst
ourselves and with the OSGeo foundation.
The rest of this email attempts to explain the different concerns which
are at play and then lay out the alternative scenarios, starting with
the current situation, i.e. scenario (1), and explain what the
consequences are of each.
The Interests of concern:
------------------------
Contributors:
- to maintain their contributions of code as free software under
the
LGPL or under essentially identical terms
- to maintain their contributions of documentation as free
documents under the FDL or under essentially identical terms
- to maintain their contributions of example code under terms
as
close to the public domain as practical
- to retain the right to use their own contributions for any
other
purpose they choose
- to protect from lawsuits
Foundation:
- to protect from lawsuits
- to act as a legal buffer between plaintiffs and contributors
- to empower with standing to enforce the license on behalf of
users
Users/Redistributors:
- to grant the 4 key freedoms: use, copy, modify, and distribute
- to protect from lawsuits of derivative users
The current situation:
---------------------
Currently the legal relationship of contributors, of the codebase, and
of users/redistributors is based mostly on defaults and presumptions.
Contributors are assumed to have a clear copyright to the code they
submit. Contributors are assumed to agree to the act of licensing their
code as part of Geotools to everyone under the terms of the LGPL. We
presume that contributors are granting code without submarine patents,
that is that they are not contributing code that they will then claim to
have patent rights on. We presume that anyone redistributing Geotools
has agreed to the LGPL and that those who will redistribute the docs
have agreed to the FDL.
Currently, each contributor has the copyright to the work they
contribute. Each can therefore also do anything else they choose with
their own code. The status of the whole code base is not totally clear.
It could be considered a joint work, so each contributor would have
an ?equal?, joint ownership of the whole work. It could also be
considered that Geotools is a compilation so that each contributor would
have a copyright over the aggregate but that kind of right is very hard
to enforce since if someone adds a library they could claim to have an
unrelated, unique compilation. Therefore it may be that in our current
setup no one could successfully claim in court to own a copyright over
any particular version, say 2.3.0, of Geotools.
These assumptions are certainly reasonable and may never lead to any
problems. The LGPL license provides all the key elements for the
granting to users the freedoms they need to use, copy, modify and
redistribute Geotools. Anyone re-distributing Geotools either agrees to
our copyright claim on the code and to the terms of the LGPL (the only
thing that gives them any rights to use, copy, modify and redistribute
the code) or they claim their own copyright on the code.
HOWEVER, because they are assumptions and not formal agreements, they
leave each contributor and every Geotools re-distributor especially
vulnerable to lawsuits.
The Options:
-----------
The options were presented above as (1) do nothing beyond the code
review, (2) keep things as they are but have committers sign an
agreement formalizing things, (3) have committers sign an agreement
granting to OSGeo an exclusive license to our contributions, or (4) have
committers sign an agreement granting to OSGeo the copyright to the
contributions.
Option 1:
--------
We continue under the current status, assuming they will be no problems
and will have to face the full brunt of any problems which do arise.
This involves no work but is dangerous: everyone can be sued and anyone
sued has no way to show how they have the right do use or re-distribute
the code. If anyone violates the license we have to sue as individuals.
We have no way to change license in the future if the need ever arises
(say moving from LGPL v.2 to v6 or some such).
Option 2:
--------
Here we have to go through the work of getting most contributors to sign
an agreement. However, by formalizing the agreements, we can protect
contributors, the foundation, and users/redistributors by both
dissuading lawsuits and protecting all of us in the case of a lawsuit.
Therefore options (2), (3) and (4) above, which involve a formal written
agreement of contributors, are preferable to option (1). We still have
to sue individually if someone violates the LGPL and can't relicense.
Option 3:
--------
Here we go through the work of signing. However, OSGeo acts as a shield
between contributors and any users/redistributors *including* the other
contributors. Also, OSGeo can sue license violators on our behalf.
Option 4:
---------
Here we go through the work of signing, OSGeo acts as a shield and can
sue on our behalf. Also, it is possible for OSGeo to re-license the code
if the need should arise which also means that we need or agreement to
prevent OSGeo from being able to re-license the code as un-free
software.
Next Step:
---------
On Thursday, December 21st at 20:00 UTC, we will have an IRC meeting to
discuss these issues. We will try to answer questions, gather remaining
questions to ask lawyers, and get feed back.
The PMC will have to reach some consensus on which options they want to
push for.
I'll try to craft a draft of the copyright assignment agreement that
could meet Geotools needs and see what response I get from the lawyers
and OSGeo board.
--adrian
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