[Opensim-users] The Overte Foundation for OpenSimulator

Thu Jun 30 03:49:16 UTC 2011

>From my perspective, this announcement sounds like extremely welcome and
exciting news!

It's always seemed very unfortunate that communities that should be able to
collaborate and benefit from each others' knowledge and experience haven't
been able to because of these kinds of legal concerns, so anything that
helps reduce those barriers sounds like a positive to me.  In the grand
scheme of things, virtual worlds and the metaverse are still pretty niche
interests/technologies, and Second Life and OpenSim niches with that niche -
better to combine the talents, skills, and passions of those involved in
both platforms if it can be done safely and reasonably without jeopardizing
OpenSim's future.

It's also good to hear you're pursuing a non-profit foundation model and
separating the functions of the board and the community based contribution
model.  That kind of setup has worked very well for some of the most
successful opensource projects and I think those of you on the founding
board have shown good instincts for the kinds of stewardship the foundation
will need.

Congratulations and I look forward to seeing how this develops.  :)

- Chris/Fleep

Chris M. Collins (SL: Fleep Tuque)
Project Manager, UC Second Life
Second Life Ambassador, Ohio Learning Network
UCit Instructional & Research Computing
University of Cincinnati
406E Zimmer Hall
PO Box 210088
Cincinnati, OH 45221-0088
(513)556-3018
chris.collins at uc.edu

UC Second Life:   http://homepages.uc.edu/secondlife
OLN Second Life: http://www.oln.org/emerging_technologies/emtech.php

On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 9:21 PM, Justin Clark-Casey <
jjustincc at googlemail.com> wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> As I'm sure everybody on these lists is aware, OpenSimulator currently has
> some restrictions on who can contribute code to the project (
> http://opensimulator.org/**wiki/Contributions_Policy<http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Contributions_Policy>
> ).
>
> The most controversial of these is the one that prevents contributions from
> people who have studied the Linden Lab viewer within the past 6 months.
>
> This policy came about because the early core developers wanted to be very
> cautious when dealing with a project that was intimately intertwined with
> OpenSimulator through a common virtual world protocol and concept, but which
> was licensed under the copyleft GPL license rather than OpenSimulator's BSD
> license.  It was also inspired by bad, though unrelated, early experiences
> of unwanted inclusion of GPL code within OpenSimulator.
>
> However, this rule increasingly restricts progress and innovation.  To
> state the obvious, it effectively stops Linden Lab viewer and third party
> viewer developers from contributing to OpenSimulator and it stops
> OpenSimulator developers from contributing code to those viewers.
>
> We do want to do something about this.  In very broad terms, there are two
> choices of action.  Either we simply drop the 6 month restriction or we
> establish a Contributor's License Agreement (CLA) to explicitly clarify that
> a developer has the necessary rights to contribute the code that they're
> giving.
>
> Simply dropping the restriction is tempting.  However, the conditions under
> which it was established have not changed - the core of the Linden Lab
> viewer and derivatives is still under the copyleft LGPL license.  Some
> people think that in general such restrictions are entirely unnecessary but
> others think that it's a reasonable precaution in the absence of a CLA.
>
> So the other alternative is to have that CLA.  This is the route that we've
> started going down.  The proposal is to have a CLA by which a contributor
> explicitly grants a copyright license over their contributions.  Each
> contributor will continue to own their own code (i.e. there is no transfer
> of copyright).
>
> Again, there is considerable debate over CLAs, with some people seeing them
> as essential and others thinking that they are entirely unnecessary.
>  However, many open-source projects have CLAs (Apache, Django, Python, the
> Linden Lab viewer) so we would not be in bad company.  Having to submit a
> CLA might also reduce casual 'drive-by' patches, though we would make CLA
> submitting as easy as possible - by accepting them electronically, for
> instance.
>
> In order to grant a copyright license there needs to be a receiving entity.
>  To this end, we are in the process of setting up an organisation known as
> the Overte Foundation.  The Overte Foundation will receive the copyright
> licenses and become the official distributor of OpenSimulator rather than
> individual core developers.  This will put it in a good position to deal
> with code origin or other issues, if any should ever arise.
>
> Once the CLA is complete, the current contribution restrictions to
> OpenSimulator will be removed.  It will be down to each developer (including
> core developers) to affirm via the CLA that they have the necessary rights
> over the code that they are contributing.
>
> One advantage of going down the foundation route is that it will also be
> able to promote and support OpenSimulator in other ways, quite possibly
> incorporating members of the community other than just developers.  The
> foundation could also extend to cover other open-source
> virtual-environment/virtual-**world projects and components.  In the short
> term, though, we will be concentrating on establishing the CLA.
>
> At some point soon we would be very grateful for donations to the Overte
> Foundation in order to deal with some of the costs involved in setting
> things up and for ongoing support and promotion of OpenSimulator.  Setup
> costs should not be too high since Ben Esplin of Pillsbury Law is very
> kindly donating time and expertise (he also helped OSgrid establish their
> organisation).
>
> We're actually still in the process of setting up the foundation so we'll
> only be requesting donations once we have a bank account for them.  However,
> we wanted to get this out in the open now so that people know what is being
> proposed and so that we can get feedback.
>
> For a much shorter public statement and FAQ about these topics shorn of the
> historical context, please see
>
> http://opensimulator.org/wiki/**Foundation<http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Foundation>
> http://opensimulator.org/wiki/**Foundation_FAQ<http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Foundation_FAQ>
>
> I will be acting as the first Overte Foundation president, with Diva as
> treasurer, Melanie as secretary and Nebadon and Ben as initial board
> members.  The foundation itself will not directly control OpenSimulator
> development - this will remain with the OpenSimulator team and community as
> it does now.
>
> Discussion about this is very welcome, whether supporting or critical.  I'm
> logging off now so will likely answer any points tomorrow.  Of course, other
> core developers are very welcome to chip in.
>
> Best,
>
> --
> Justin Clark-Casey (justincc)
> http://justincc.org/blog
> http://twitter.com/justincc
> ______________________________**_________________
> Opensim-users mailing list
> Opensim-users at lists.berlios.de
> https://lists.berlios.de/**mailman/listinfo/opensim-users<https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-users>
>
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