[Opensim-users] The Overte Foundation for OpenSimulator

Thu Jun 30 08:14:43 UTC 2011

I also see this as great news for the future of OpenSim.  Thanks to everyone
involved in organising this - doing nasty bureaucratic stuff when you'd much
rather be coding!

Neil Canham
CTO vComm Solutions

On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 4:49 AM, Fleep Tuque <fleep513 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>> ______________________________**_________________
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>>
>
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