First I want to talk about JPP versus OpenJUMP. Then I want to talk about copyright on OJ code.
I'm still kind of attached to the Jump Pilot Project name, since that's what we used long ago when this all got started. I think it is important to remember that the Jump Pilot Project is technically the software project set-up to coordinate work on a number of JUMP forks. I view OpenJUMP as the product of that software project, not the project itself. That may not seem like an important distinction, but I could see the JUMP Pilot Project being set-up at some future point to help maintain JTS or JCS or other software related to OpenJUMP. For many months I've wanted to use some of the JUMP code to set-up a Geotools like library for OpenJUMP's simple feature model, which is simply the best I've ever seen implemented in code. I haven't had the time to do that yet, but I can see that being another product of the JPP. Apache is the organization that produces the Ant build tool. In a similar way, the JPP produces OpenJUMP. If you've been around long enough, you'll remember when we had the JPP, but OpenJUMP was just had a code base without a name. :] I know not everyone involved in development now has been around long enough to know all this, but I do think they are important details. As far as the copyright notice goes, I think we are a little bit sloppy with how we handle it. I'd prefer not to have a copyright notice at all, rather than a copyright notice done improperly. This get's especially tricky in OpenJUMP since we can have so many contributors working on a single class. It seems like most serious open source projects make you sign a copyright waiver before you contribute code. That is how I would prefer we handle copyright:You waive your copyright to contribute. If that makes people uncomfortable, I think we should have an opt-out system for copyright waiver. In this scenario you would specifically reserve copyright when you think your code is important and unique enough. We'd then have to track that. FYI: This sort of system will make it easier if we ever decide to formalize OpenJUMP as a non-profit. If we really want to handle this properly we should think about making OpenJUMP an OSGeo project or making the JPP a project of the Free Software Conservancy (http://sfconservancy.org/). I made the SurveyOS Project part of the Conservancy a while back, and they are good folks. This means they hold copyright to my code, offer some legal protection in the advent of a patent infringement lawsuit (or something similar), and can go after people who use the SurveyOS code and violate the GPL. If there is real interest in handling copyright properly, we should elect three or four people to the development committee and have them research our options. I'm willing to help the committee with the administration of this efffort, because I think it is important. Landon On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 4:14 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > On 29.01.2012 01:10, Stefan Steiniger wrote: >> Hei all developers, >> >> while answering on an email on the JTS list, I saw that for >> DeleteDublicateGeometries I am still carrying the copyright although the >> class was changed by others (see the header below). >> >> However, for the test-class it was used: >> >> Copyright (C) 2012 The JUMP/OpenJUMP contributors >> >> for those who do not know: keeping the copyright notice apart from the >> license notice allows the author to reuse code later in another product >> ... you never know ;) > > this is plain wrong. a proper copyright notice merely enables you to contact > all authors in case you need to (mostly relicensing). > >>(And this has been important for ISA and will be >> probably for the ADBToolbox makers) >> >> http://www.majordojo.com/2010/07/license-vs-copyright.php > > this merely explains the difference between license and copyright, which is > there and will always be. > > to put it simple: > > by contributing under GPL every copyright owner grants the permission to use > and modify freely. he in a way waives his rights for usage under the terms of > GPL. so if somebody reuses the code under GPL this somebody does not need > permision or even know the copyright holder. > > a bit more precise: > > every contributor owns the copyright (intellectual ownership) to the code > contributed (if created by themselves). interestingly, this copyright > actually cannot be sold according to german law but other countries like USA > allow this. germany allows the sale of all exploitation rights though. > > by contributing to a GPL project, the code usually bases on other code of the > GPL project, hence the contribution falls automatically under GPL. if this is > not the case the contributor should be asked to explicitly license the > contribution accordingly. if not done the contribution could be "taken away" > again at any time by the copyright holder. > > having cleared that (re-)usage under the GPL is always fine there is the > other case. > but reusage in a nonGPL scenario is a totally different issue. you have to > ask each and every of the original authors (copyright holder) permission to > relicense their work. if cannot get one or two permissions you might be lucky > to be able to extract their parts. very often you might not be able to > contact everybody because the project is so old and had so many contributors > that you will likely have copyrighted work for that you don't know the owner > by name. > > in conclusion: it is not about the product you want to reuse the code but the > license the product is under ;) > > regards ede > > PS: regarding the notice in the source. i don't care. i would rather call us > openjump team now instead of jump pilot, but that's personal preference. > generally we should update all java source headers some time and we could do > it then. for my contributions i _only_ take the effort to add my copyright if > the chunks are big enough. mainly whole classes or extensions. > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Try before you buy = See our experts in action! > The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers > is just $99.99! 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