Hey, apologies for a bit of a delay on response to this.
So for me TOPP is just the entity that holds copyright, and it’s up to the PSC to decide any changes to that copyright. So I don’t think I’d feel comfortable with any OpenGeo employee saying it’s ok, unless it’s the express wish of the PSC.
Now OpenGeo policy has always been to push the code to the lowest level of libraries as possible, and that any code written for GeoServer is available for GeoTools if people want to port it. And I feel comfortable giving that approval to OpenGeo employees, and to anyone else who wants to take OpenGeo code.
I think the thing to do is have the PSC set a policy on migrating code from GeoServer to GeoTools. I think it could set some threshold under which moving code over is pre-approved, and that larger commits should ask the PSC? I don’t think it has to be a ton of red tape, just a GSIP that we adopt. And then TOPP can reiterate that somehow officially, and not have to ask every time.
For this case in particular, if we want to move faster, I feel comfortable approving the porting of all code done by OpenGeo employees on OpenGeo time to GeoTools. It looks like Simone also did some of the work, so I’d say if he is also comfortable with porting it over then we have approval. Or we can ask the PSC.
Chris
On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 3:16 AM, Ben Caradoc-Davies <Ben.Caradoc-Davies@anonymised.com> wrote:
On 14/05/12 14:34, Andrea Aime wrote:
It is my understanding that if you’re the sole author of a particular
piece of code
you retain the right to re-license it without having to get approval from
The Open Planning Project (that is, you give TOPP the copyright without losing
yours, might be wrong here).
Yes.
GeoServer contributors assign their copyrights to TOPP:
“For good and valuable consideration, receipt of which I acknowledge, I, ___________________,
hereby transfer to The Open Planning Project (“TOPP”) my entire right, title, and interest (including all
rights under copyright) in the program GeoServer (“Program”), including original code, accompanying
documentation and supporting files, changes and enhancements to the Program code and accompanying
files, and all future modifications of the Program code and accompanying files, subject to the conditions
below.”
Then TOPP licences it back to you for any purpose:
“TOPP hereby grants me a royalty-free non-exclusive license to use or sub-license the Work
assigned hereunder (i.e., if I am assigning changes and enhancements to the Program to TOPP, the license
granted by TOPP to me is only for those changes and enhancements to the Program I assigned, it is not for
the Program which I changed or enhanced itself) for any purpose. TOPP’s rights shall otherwise continue
unchanged.”
And so you should be able to sublicence it to OSGeo. I think this is what the second quote means. I’m not sure if you can assign your copyright again, as you no longer have it. But I am not a lawyer.
My point is that the original author should be able to copy code from GeoServer to GeoTools, and TOPP should be able to authorise such copying, but in general, other developers cannot. To do so would allow rogue developers to sneak out from the clutches of the GPL (imagine some committing all of GeoServer into the GeoTools repo so they could claim it as LGPL).
Generally speaking we never had an automatic mechanism like you describe
though, to put it in place I believe we’d need quite a bit of red tape.
I think it is an issue that should be addressed. If we go to the effort of getting contributor agreements, then this issue should be addressed.
–
Ben Caradoc-Davies Ben.Caradoc-Davies@anonymised.com
Software Engineer
CSIRO Earth Science and Resource Engineering
Australian Resources Research Centre