[CIG-ALL] Draft Software Policy now available for comment

[cig-all at geodynamics.org]

Dear Members of the CIG Community,

I wanted to bring to your attention the draft CIG
Policy on Software Licensing and Ownership. The
Science Steering Committee, under the chairmanship of
Marc Parmentier, has been working on the policy. They
have had extensive discussions and have received
comments from the CIG engineers, the Caltech Licensing
office, and a Caltech attorney. The SSC believes that
the policy provides us with a plan for open source
software in nearly all cases while also giving the
flexibility to work with different groups in the
community that many have their own requirements for
licenses. 

The SSC is now seeking your input on the draft before
advancing the policy to the Executive Committee for
final approval. You can find the Policy posted on the
web site, with facilities for posting your comments,
at:

http://www.geodynamics.org:8080/cig/software/policy/licensing

If you are interested in making comments, please make
them known to the committee by posting them on the web
(or by e-mailing committee members) by Sept. 23.

Thanks for your assistance.

Mike Gurnis

==============================================


Computational Infrastructure for Geodynamics (CIG),
California Institute of Technology
Policy on Software Ownership and Licensing
Draft September 2, 2005

The goal of CIG is to develop software in support of
Earth science research and education.  Since a major
aim is for the widest availability and impact of all
CIG developments and software, all software CIG
develops will be open source. In order to uphold these
principals, CIG adopts this Policy with the following
aspects:

1. CIG will maintain a software repository on the
World Wide Web at geodynamics.org in which software
can be checked out without restrictions as software is
developed. In order to ensure the quality of CIG
software, the privilege to check software back into
the repository by members of the CIG community will be
made on a case-by-case basis.

2. Some software will be solely developed by the CIG
staff.  In such cases, the copyright will be retained
by the California Institute of Technology and
distributed under the Free Software Foundation?s GNU
General Public License (GNU GPL), unless otherwise
stated.  

3. Some software will be written in collaboration
between CIG staff and other organization(s) or
individual(s).  In each case, but before the
collaboration is initiated, CIG must enter into an
agreement that clearly specifies who the copyright
holder(s) will be and the terms of the software
release. When possible, copyright shall belong to all
contributing parties, and the software released under
the GNU GPL.

4. Some software will be preexisting and not
necessarily free from existing third-party copyrights
and licenses. In the event that CIG wishes to use or
to modify, improve, and/or distribute such software,
CIG will, with its collaborators, determine who the
copyright holders are and enter into an agreement to
have the resulting software released under an open
source license, preferably the GNU GPL.  In
exceptional cases, CIG will consider a different
license as long as it is free for non-commercial use
but otherwise satisfies the principles of open source
software.

5. In order to maximize the benefit to the Community,
the details of this policy may change from time to
time, but such changes will always be subject to
Member input and discussion and then final approval by
the CIG Executive



	
		
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