Changes between Version 17 and Version 18 of codesprint/201106-bolsena


Ignore:
Timestamp:
Jun 19, 2011, 1:44:18 AM (13 years ago)
Author:
simonp
Comment:

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  • codesprint/201106-bolsena

    v17 v18  
    1818 * Update AB ?
    1919 * Propose PSC update ?
     20   * Rather than remove members of the PSC who did contribute but no longer contribute, perhaps we could create a project reference group so that they could still be formally associated with the project?
     21 * Propose advisory board update ?
     22   * The organisations currently represented on the advisory board could be expanded/changed to include others? Members of the PSC could identify and submit names of representatives from these organisations for consideration by the PSC.
     23   * This may be a way of getting organisations that want changes (eg. those that submitted the long list to Bolsena last year) to get involved and commit $$ to make their list of requirements happen.
    2024 * See & update:
    2125  * http://trac.osgeo.org/geonetwork/wiki/PSC
    2226  * List of motions in the proposal page
     27
     28=== Copyright notice in code and Licensing ===
     29
     30(Added by Simon 19/06/2011)
     31
     32Currently the code has a variety of copyright statements but most (C) UN FAO, some new code has (C) GeoNetwork. The problem is that if anyone violates the copyright or the GPL licence then we need to have the copyright assigned to a legal entity that has the rights, resources and the interest as only the copyright holder has the power to act against violations. Presumably the FAO is not interested in doing this anymore? and definitely not the non-existent GeoNetwork legal entity :-). GPL licensing means that we could assign copyright to the Free Software Foundation as per http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.html.
     33
     34To do this we need:
     35
     36 * list of past, present contributors
     37 * assignment of copyright from existing contributors and copyright holders
     38 * all future contributions to be assigned to the FSF? (add to conditions that have to be accepted by new committers? [wiki:committer committer conditions])
     39
     40Motivation:
     41 
     42 * recently at least one commercial operation has begun distributing a modified version of GeoNetwork most likely without obeying the GPL licence conditions that the source code be distributed with it
     43
     44GPL Licence problems:
     45
     46Others are cloning the GeoNetwork code, making improvements and are not willing to return their improvements to the community in the form of source code. It's unfortunate that neither GPLv2 or GPLv3 Affero can guarantee that these modifications are returned to the community. GNU Affero is stricter as it has a few more conditions on how source code has to be made available but it still allows the person/organisation making the modifications to make them available to the public for a charge (ie. $$).
     47
     48Any other comments? (I'm definitely not an expert on any of this and I can see quite a few people probably thinking this is all too hard :-) - if so then perhaps we should abandon the GNU GPL licence (requires agreement from contributors) and use some other licence eg. apache?).
     49 
     50=== Contributors ===
     51
     52(Added by Simon 19/06/2011)
     53
     54I'd like to see a list of contributors maintained on http://geonetwork-opensource.org/contributors and I'd be prepared to help out in assembling and maintaining such a list. List of contributors and their organisations could also be shown by the installer flash screen? Contributors page could have information similar to that provided on http://geoserver.org/display/GEOS/Contributors.
    2355
    2456=== Community tools ===