Clarify Copyright Assignment for Future License Upgrades

[zacdezgeo]

There are discussions about where the guide will be hosted, and we should revisit attribution and licensing pending that conversation.

Why This Is Important
Understanding who holds the copyright will help us:

• Make informed decisions about license changes in the future.
• Ensure that we have the legal flexibility to adapt as circumstances require.
• Clarify the rights and responsibilities of contributors.

Questions to Resolve

• Are contributors implicitly assigning copyright when they contribute, and if so, to whom?
• Do we need to update our CONTRIBUTING.md or other documentation to make this explicit?

Next Steps

• Discuss and share decision within this issue.
• Update documentation as required.

[zacdezgeo]

@wildintellect do we consider this solved?

[wildintellect]

@zacharyDez no, https://github.com/cloudnativegeo/cloud-optimized-geospatial-formats-guide/blob/main/contributing.qmd does not explain authorship credit or copyright ownership. Nor do I think any discussion or conclusion was reached on what we are asking contributors to agree to? Are we asking for Copyright assignment? If so to who?

[christine-e-smit]

Hi! I'm wondering what the thoughts are on this question of copyright now. https://guide.cloudnativegeo.org/ has two conflicting copyright-related notices: one saying that the Cloud-Native Geospatial Foundation has the copyright, and one giving the document a Creative Commons Attribute 4.0 International License.

What is your intention for this document? I'd love to use your file format table diagram because it's great. With the Creative Commons license, I could do that as long as I include attribution. With the Cloud-Native Geospatial Foundation (or is it Forum?!?) copyright, I'd need to have legal permission to use the diagrams. My organization is part of the CNG, so I think I'm in the clear, but this could be a significant barrier for a lot of folks.

If CNG wants to maintain copyright, that's fine. The CC license should be removed. If CNG wants folks to easily use their content, then the CNG Foundation copyright statement should be removed.

The entire repo has a CC license in github, so I'm guessing that is the license that was intended. Should I submit a pull request to remove the conflicting copyright notice?

cloud-optimized-geospatial-formats-guide/_quarto.yml

Lines 16 to 17 in 5dde17d

center: '<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License</a>. <img style="height:22px!important;margin-left:3px;vertical-align:text-bottom;" src="https://mirrors.creativecommons.org/presskit/icons/cc.svg?ref=chooser-v1"><img style="height:22px!important;margin-left:3px;vertical-align:text-bottom;" src="https://mirrors.creativecommons.org/presskit/icons/by.svg?ref=chooser-v1">'

left: '&copy; [Cloud-Native Geospatial Foundation](https://cloudnativegeo.org/), 2023'

[wildintellect]

@christine-e-smit I think you misunderstand CC, CNGF owns the copyright and is licensing it as CC Attribution there is no conflict. So you are allowed to use it as long as you cite CNGF. I'll ask them to clarify/update to Forum cc: @PowerChell

[christine-e-smit]

Ah! Okay. That makes sense. I thought you could only have one or the other. Thank you for the explanation.