Adrian Custer wrote: > My new proposal is to first create the 'project' as a formal structure > of OSGeo and then to define contributions as additions to that project. > > The first part will 'create' a formal Geotools project as that body of > work which is an effort fostered by OSGeo, managed by a well defined > PSC, with the control of the www.geotools.org domain name. Legally, we > need to establish that project as something that cannot be confused with > any other project. OSGeo would formally create this project as an effort > of its own and during this creation, OSGeo would guarantee to be a good > custodian no matter whether its role is as a regular licensee, an > exclusive licensee or a copyright holder.
Adrian, I'm not sure what you mean by a "formal structure". Upon completing incubation GeoTools would formally become a project of the foundation but as a legal definition I'm not sure that it means very much. At some point I think it is sufficient to say that a contribution to the GeoTools project is one that is committed into the GeoTools SVN server as maintained by OSGeo and managed by the GeoTools PSC, or code previously contributed to the informal GeoTools project. I also get a little skittery every time you talk about OSGeo giving a guarantee for something. As a director it is my obvious preference to provide a minimum number of legal guarantees on behalf of the foundation. I'm not keen on having to defend against a legal assault from a GeoTools developer irate because our SVN server for the GeoTools code turned out to be insecure, or something similar. At some point I think you need to have some degree of confidence in the foundation. One thing I would like to see done at some point is ensure that the foundation is firmly bound to the rule that foundation held software will only ever be offered under an OSI approved license. Best regards, -- ---------------------------------------+-------------------------------------- I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam, [EMAIL PROTECTED] light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam and watch the world go round - Rush | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Geotools-devel mailing list Geotools-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geotools-devel
