It seems to me, thus far the replies to this request for information point to the future, but ignore the past. "a fairly extensive body of code" indicates to me this code has been a long time in development.
Under what circumstances was it developed? That is, were the developers working for someone who may be able to lay claim to the rights to the code as the Regents of The University of California once made against the Berkeley Standard Distribution? Can you get those rights released? Likewise, can you get the previous developers to release their rights? Remembering I am not a lawyer, I understand that anyone who has not given the rights to their work to someone else retains a copyright on the code. This has been a stumbling block for several projects. Does the code use libraries or other components that are protected by some license that would restrict the distribution of the code developed? And to whom is everyone releasing their rights? Will you be forming a foundation or placing the code under the umbrella of a foundation such as The Apache Software Foundation? Or, perhaps, adding to something like the OER Commons? I'm sure there are plenty of people who could make good use of physics simulation software. Best wishes in successfully releasing your work. >>>> On Jun 25, 2012, at 11:55 PM,<[email protected]> >>>> <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> I been asked to help take a fairly extensive body of code and >>>>> release it as an open source project. >>>>> >>>>> I'm wondering if someone can point me to some resources that >>>>> might guide us along this process? >>>>> >>>>> My collaborators have a body of code used for physics simulation. >>>>> It's all under Mercurial for internal management. They want to >>>>> distribute it under an open source model, while maintaining control >>>>> of the "official" version. >>>>> >>>>> Any pointers, guidelines, or advice would be appreciated. >>>>> >>>>> T. F. Pawlicki >>>>> Dept. Computer Science >>>>> University of Rochester _______________________________________________ tos mailing list [email protected] http://lists.teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos
