I wanted to ask the community's thoughts on submitting a proposal for Trac to become a member of the Software Freedom Conservancy. [0]
(I'm only a user, list lurker, occasional ranter, and very occasional provider of plugin patches, but,) I think trac joining SFC would be a good thing. SFC indeed has a good reputation, and exists to provide umbrella 501(c)3 benefits to member projects without imposing significant constraints on how the project operates beyond insisting that it's actually a free software project. In particular, SFC won't insist on a particular license, a particular version-control tool, particular hosting, CLAs, etc. But, one item is perhaps confusing: I wanted to see if any reputable foundation existed that could hold Trac's copyright without imposing any changes on Trac's existing license, development infrastructure, and governance. There are basically 3 approaches here: custodian organization holds copyright, with formal assignment (e.g. emacs in FSF) custodian organization has a formal CLA, and while individuals/companies that produce code retain copyright, there is a formal grant of permission to license inbound=outbound: there is no formal CLA but there's a policy, perhaps formal, that states that all code contributions are made under the existing license. I have the impression trac operates in the third mode, but it's not clear. That said, edgewall could assign any copyrights it does hold to SFC.
pgpFlVaIZ4gX2.pgp
Description: PGP signature
