Code Provenance Review

[robe]

OSGeo is getting a bit frustrated with our ineptness at completing the requisites to become an official Incubation project.

I'm sure they aren't the only ones. First on list is Code Provenance Review. I personally do not feel skilled enough to do this, but hope that strk, Mat, Paul or some others with more experience in these matters can take this on.

 http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php?title=PostGIS_Incubation_Status

Link to guidelines for writing one  http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Code_Provenance_Review

If we find issues also address them

[mloskot]

Quick scan for Copyright to roughly estimate the current situation

[robe]

For the tiger stuff we've been working on, I didn't see any copyright on the original files. I know Steve Frost and I forget who else he had working with him did a lot of work on it, so was going to put his name on (though I assume that is something he should probably do). Leo and I made corrections and added the reverse_geocoder and the cross platform loader generator.

As far as the original original, I assume it was done by Refractions, but not absolutely sure. Does anyone know the origination of the tiger geocoder we have. Its been there for as far back as I can remember.

[robe]

Thank goodness for newsgroups. Well I guess this  http://www.postgis.org/pipermail/postgis-users/2004-September/005762.html answers the question.

What's the rule on retroactively applying copyright?

[chodgson]

So it would appear that most files have a header similar to:

/**********************************************************************
 * $Id:$
 *
 * PostGIS - Spatial Types for PostgreSQL
 * http://postgis.refractions.net
 * Copyright 2001-2011 Refractions Research Inc.
 *
 * This is free software; you can redistribute and/or modify it under
 * the terms of the GNU General Public Licence. See the COPYING file.
 *
 **********************************************************************/

I'd like to go through and add this header to all the files which have no header and no other copyright notice. Obviously not generated files, and using the appropriate comment format.

Is this reasonable?

[robe]

+1 from me, Though I guess should wait for other PSCers to agree before you go ahead.

[chodgson]

I have started a Provenance Review document here:

http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/wiki/DevWikiProvenanceReview

I will make notes as per the OSGeo guidelines as I review the code.

[chodgson]

Further to my earlier header question, should the header also be applied to the documentation .xml files? I guess I can't see why not. Though it might make sense to use a different license for the documentation since GPL is meant for code - something from creative commons perhaps? Although maybe we can't even change it easily at this point? (I am not a license guru).

[robe]

Good point. Lets avoid the documentation for now. I've never much cared that our documentation is GPL. Would be nice to change it to a Creative Common of some sort if at all possible.

[strk]

All done. PostGIS graduated.