I think that OSGeoLive should require all current and new contributors,
who have not already done so, to sign an OSGeo contributor agreement,
except in the case of tiny contributions that are mixed in with existing
works. AFAIK, OSGeo contributor agreements cover contributions to any
OSGeo project, so if you have signed one for another project, you should
be covered.
Contributor agreements that either assign copyright or grant an
irrevocable licence with a right to sublicense protect projects from
contributors who revoke or threaten to revoke the right to use their
contribution. The OSGeo contributor agreement grants an irrevocable
licence with a right to sublicense.
In the last few weeks, the vulnerability of projects that fail to either
assign copyright or grant an irrevocable licence with a right to
sublicense has been a topic of great interest in the Linux community,
after the adoption of a new Code of Conduct, an allegation of misconduct
against a core developer, and threats to rescind the licence of
contributions:
https://lulz.com/linux-devs-threaten-killswitch-coc-controversy-1252/
Tim Pool reads through an older version of the LULZ article:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5VvJiNUCIA
Regardless of the merits of any code of conduct or allegations of a
breach, copyright assignment or something like the OSGeo contributor
agreement (which is based on the Apache contributor agreement) would
have prevented this threat to the viability of the Linux project.
Ideally, we would go back and obtain contributor agreements from all
past contributors, but obtaining contributor agreements from current
active and new contributors would in my view provide sufficient
protection going forward. Small contributions are lower risk and by
turning a blind eye we lower barrier to entry but it would be nice to
set a rule of thumb as to what is small.
Kind regards,
Ben.
On 24/09/2018 22:26, Cameron Shorter wrote:
OSGeo Incubation committee,
At the OSGeoLive project, we have been debating how we address contributor
agreements.
It is coming to a head because we have made it easier to contribute
translations and docs (which could be as simple as fixing a spelling
mistake).
To date, we have been specifically asking software developers to send an
email to our public email list saying something like:
"I want to contribute XXX to OSGeoLive. I acknowledge that my contributions
will be in line with OSGeoLive's Open licenses ..."
We have conflicting opinions on the legal value gained by such statements,
versus the overhead involved.
We'd be interested to hear thoughts on whether such legal protections are
still warranted in today's open source and business environment.
Cheers,
Cameron Shorter, one of the OSGeoLive committee members.
On 18/09/2018 12:25 AM, Nicolas Roelandt wrote:
Hi Cameron, all,
Thanks for your concerns.
I agree with you we should acknowledge and thank our contributors.
I checked (quickly, but as any new contributor) some OSGeo projects which
some of our members are involved in (MapBender, MapServer, PyWPS,
GeoServer) so they can correct me if I'm wrong.
Not all of them required to send a mail for licensing agreement. I noticed
the case of GeoServer where small and bigger contributions are treated
differently. [1]
Maybe we can copy that and only ask a mail for big contributions.
I think the prominent statement should be in our translation page of
course, but more importantly in a CONTRIBUTING.md file in the root folder
of our repositories like many other projects. [1][2][3][4]
I produce a basic one so we can start to work on it, see PR #433 [5]
And in that file, propose to people to add themselves into
contributors.csv, and explain that a mail address will be appreciated.
We should say that, by default, by any kind of contribution (code PR,
documentation improvement, translations) you agree with our licensing terms
and that your OK that we will use it for OSGeoLive.
Best,
Nicolas
[1] https://github.com/geoserver/geoserver/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md
[2] https://github.com/mapserver/mapserver/blob/branch-7-2/CONTRIBUTING.md
[3]
https://github.com/mapbender/mapbender-starter/blob/release/3.0.6/CONTRIBUTING.md
[4] https://github.com/geopython/pywps/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.rst
[5] https://github.com/OSGeo/OSGeoLive-doc/pull/433
Le ven. 14 sept. 2018 à 23:04, Cameron Shorter <[email protected]>
a écrit :
Nicholas,
There are a number of points here:
1. One of the OSGeo incubation criteria is that we ensure that all
contributions to OSGeo are available via our Open Licenses. We achieve that
by ensuring that every person who contributes to OSGeo writes a public
statement saying they agree with our open license, as per:
https://trac.osgeo.org/osgeolive/wiki/Source_code
If we are to comply with our OSGeo Incubation obligations, then we will
need to extend this to Translations.
How can we ensure that anyone contributing to Transifex is ok with our
open license? Can we get them to send the same email before we give them
access? (I think we are ok if people use an alias or git id instead of
their real name. One of our contributors is called wildintellect, and I
don't know what his/her real name is).
The importance of ensuring license compliance is because lack of license
compliance can become a barrier to entry for corporations who are scared of
being sued if they use Open Source.
2. If someone contributes to our project, it is the right thing for us to
acknowledge them.
3. A good measure of OSGeoLive's success is to quote the number of people
who have contributed. Ie, it is good for us to track number of contributors.
So I suggest:
* Update to note that to contribute, we will be expecting to have your
permission if we are to use your translations. You can see email
conversation last time we were retrospectively chasing down agreements from
people for their Open Source contributions here:
https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/osgeolive/2011-July/thread.html . In
particular:
https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/osgeolive/2011-July/003686.html
* We could be creative in the way that we confirm commitment to Open
licenses.
** Maybe insert a prominent statement in our translation page (ideally
next to the [submit] button) saying "by submitting are are agreeing to make
your content available via our open license policy" and link to our open
policy page.
** Request people add their name to our list of contributors page (not
sure how we do that, but we can work out details later)
Cheers, Cameron
On 15/9/18 3:25 am, Vicky Vergara wrote:
Thanks for moving the discussion to the OSGeoLive mailing list.
Regards
On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 12:33 AM Nicolas Roelandt <[email protected]>
wrote:
Hi all,
I asked for a review of an announcement [1] for our contributors and
translators regarding the new European General Data Protection Regulation
(GDPR) [2].
It was not straightforward as I thought and it became a debate.
My mistake was not to publish the link to the draft here, as I wanted to
avoid mails here about "Fix that, add this, ..."
I was wrong, so please next time, tell me to bring it to the public
mailing list.
The debate is not settled and was already bring it there. We just
released 12.0 so I think we can discuss it now and have clear policies.
Best,
Nicolas
[1] https://mensuel.framapad.org/p/osgeolive_contributor_consent_message
[2] https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection_en
_______________________________________________
osgeolive mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/osgeolive
--
Cameron Shorter
Technology Demystifier
Open Technologies and Geospatial Consultant
M +61 (0) 419 142 254
_______________________________________________
osgeolive mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/osgeolive
--
Ben Caradoc-Davies <[email protected]>
Director
Transient Software Limited <https://transient.nz/>
New Zealand
_______________________________________________
osgeolive mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/osgeolive
