Hi Arnulf,
hi devs,
I (without knowing too much about the legal stuff) think the option with
copyright transfer to the OSGeo might be the best choice. I read the
document you suggested in IRC
(http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Individual_Contributor_License_Agreement_%28CLA%29)
and personally think this sounds well.
What is the deal with single files that currently have the copyright
header set to something else than CCGIS?
Bye,
-- Marc
Arnulf Christl schrieb:
Hi All,
there is some legal stuff that we need to attend to. It is a dry topic
so bear with me and I will try to make it as painless as possible.
After we all understand the involved issues we should proceed to
decide on how to go on.
Mapbender sources are protected by the GNU GPL license. The initial
code was release by the company CCGIS Christl & Stamm GbR who is also
the copyright of Mapbender code. As CCGIS merged with two other
companies to form the new WhereGroup GmbH & Co. KG. the Copyright now
lies with the owners of the WhereGroup. But it does not say so in the
sources.
Now there are several options what we can do about this.
* Leave as is (not recommended)
* Change the header in all files and license texts to say WhereGroup
GmbH & Co. KG (makes sense but there is no explicitly good reason to
do it either)
* Assign the copyright to OSGeo, change headers accordingly (recommended)
We (CCGIS and now the WhereGroup) intentionally kept (almost) all code
under CCGIS/WhereGroup because it makes things a lot easier than with
several individual copyright holders. In the latter case it becomes
very difficult to do change the license or the copyright (see the
GeoTools example below) or protect developers (something that a
Foundation could do) or sue license offenders (something that we would
probably never *want* to do either).
The name of the copyright holder (CCGIS) is not attached to a legal
entity anymore (effectively as of the end of this year) we should
reflect this in the code header and license texts.
Therefore the WhereGroup has decided to assign the copyright to the
Open Source Geospatial Foundation, something that other projects (for
example GeoTools) is also trying to do. They have a lot more issues
because unfortunately their copyright is owned by "the developers"
which is not a legal entity. They now have trouble assigning copyright
to a legal entity because they are not a legal entity. Therefore they
are currently working on a document (still pending) that will assign
copyright to OSGeo (look for CLA in the OSGeo Wiki).
Our position is much clearer because we don't have the copyright
distributed all over the place. We (the WhereGroup and some of the
developers that I have already talked to individually) would like to
go this way and assign copyright to OSGeo and be done with it.
Well. I thought this would look more coherent! Friday evening is not
the best time to start a thread about this kind of stuff but before I
throw it away again please give it a thought. Maybe you can just write
to this list and share your opinions ask questions make suggestions
word your qualms or whatever.
Best regards, Arnulf.
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