On Wed, 2006-12-20 at 12:52 -0800, Jody Garnett wrote:
> Thanks Adrian, I do like the idea of breaking this into steps - one
> document for each purpose
>
> If I understand you correctly we would be to set up "GeoTools" as an
> OSGeo project with all the legal bells and whistles.
yes
> And then drag the
> code over
> as contributors sign on.
If you mean piece by piece, no because I would imagine that would be too
hard. The physical transition to OSGeo servers should also be a separate
step from the legal transition or we will get muddled up.
The steps:
0) Decide on what we choose to do: stay the course, grant an exclusive
license, assign copyright.
1) Create an OSGeo project called "Geotools" with a new PSC.
2) Create a document that OSGeo will adopt saying it will keep all
contributions to its Geotools project as free software (Open Source +
the four key freedoms) but follow the wishes of the PMC for the specific
license it will use. This doc is either specific to Geotools or for all
projects, i.e. this may already exist in or be added to the bylaws of
the foundation.
[This protects the code from arbitrary decisions by OSGeo.]
3) Create an agreement document we will sign (either a communal
agreement of each contributor to all the others formalizing our current
situation, an exclusive license to OSGeo, or a copyright assignment to
OSGeo).
3) Get as many of us to sign on as possible, scan the signed copies into
svn and mail the original to OSGeo.
[This formalizes the legal situation, and lets any licensee have
transparently the full chain of rights that we claim for our
code so any people in India who get sued would not have to
contact OSGeo.]
4) Revoke svn commit rights from anyone who does not have an agreement
letter on file/in svn.
5) Commit the resources in what will be in essence a 'fork' of the
project. On that day, for the svn code we:
tag the repository for all active branches (or just trunk) with
a 'pre-contrib' label
change all the licenses to indicate that the files are licensed
*by* OSGeo,
[This protects us by forcing lawsuits through OSGeo.]
add a "(c) Geotools PSC, a committee of OSGeo" or "(c) OSGeo" or
some such to all the files created by those who are willing to
share their (c) with OSGeo,
[this allows OSGeo to have an interest in the code base
and gives it some legal standing to sue as a copyright
holder on the code (see also footnote [1]) ]
flag any modules/packages/files (not sure the feasible scale of
detail) that have non-trivial contributions from people who have
not signed agreements or that have code covered under a
different license,
[more due diligence]
perhaps, depending on what we decide in step (0), remove the (c)
of anyone who has granted OSGeo all their rights to past work,
[This strengthens the rights position of OSGeo.]
tag the repository for all active branches 'post-contrib'
and for the wiki, docs, jira..., we:
change the license to be granted by OSGeo
add a (c) OSGeo and info to state that this documentation is
under the control of the OSGeo Geotools project.
6) Disolve the PMC with a vote.
The transfer of any code/docs/... to OSGeo machines would be a separate
thing that would happen at a new date when machines and people are
ready.
Does that work? Perhaps I am overlooking something.
--adrian
[1] This is an old idea I had forgotten about. This is certainly enough
to have OSGeo sue for the parts of the project over which it has (c); it
may also be enough to have OSGeo sue *on behalf* of the whole project
for any violations of the code. Unfortunately, I can't ask the lawyer
who is off on holiday how strong this second part is so, for now, we
should assume it will be weak unless many of us grant OSGeo some rights.
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