[TOS] Guidelines on launching an open source project?

[Kevin Mark]

On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 01:58:18PM -0700, tosmail20110729.neophyte_rep at ordinaryamerican.net wrote:
> It seems to me, thus far the replies to this request for information
> point to the future, but ignore the past.  "a fairly extensive body of
> code" indicates to me this code has been a long time in development.
> 
> Under what circumstances was it developed?  That is, were the
> developers working for someone who may be able to lay claim to the
> rights to the code as the Regents of The University of California once
> made against the Berkeley Standard Distribution?  Can you get those
> rights released?
> 
> Likewise, can you get the previous developers to release their rights?
>  Remembering I am not a lawyer, I understand that anyone who has not
> given the rights to their work to someone else retains a copyright on
> the code.  This has been a stumbling block for several projects.
> 
> Does the code use libraries or other components that are protected by
> some license that would restrict the distribution of the code
> developed?
> 
> And to whom is everyone releasing their rights?  Will you be forming a
> foundation or placing the code under the umbrella of a foundation such
> as The Apache Software Foundation?  Or, perhaps, adding to something
> like the OER Commons?
> 
> I'm sure there are plenty of people who could make good use of physics
> simulation software.  Best wishes in successfully releasing your work.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/27513/what-is-the-difference-between-debian-contrib-non-free-and-how-it-corresponds
this is a forum post that mentions Debian main/contrib/non-free and Ubuntu
universe/restricted/multiverse. The idea being that Debian or Ubuntu 'main'
would be the best/desired case but if you have issues of non-free-ness in
things like dependencies, then that makes things more complicated as to which
distro will include it and in which section.


> 
> >>>> On Jun 25, 2012, at 11:55 PM,<pawlicki at cs.rochester.edu>
> >>>> <pawlicki at cs.rochester.edu>  wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>    I been asked to help take a fairly extensive body of code and
> >>>>> release it as an open source project.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I'm wondering if someone can point me to some resources that
> >>>>> might guide us along this process?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> My collaborators have a body of code used for physics simulation.
> >>>>> It's all under Mercurial for internal management. They want to
> >>>>> distribute it under an open source model, while maintaining control
> >>>>> of the "official" version.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>   Any pointers, guidelines, or advice would be appreciated.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> T. F. Pawlicki
> >>>>> Dept. Computer Science
> >>>>> University of Rochester
> 
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> 

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