Dear Trackers,
I'd like to give you an overview how the Association will handle intellectual property (IP) in future. EBT needs to hold the proper rights for existing content as well as future contributions.
Overview
We will use the existing licensing agreements from the Apache Foundation (AF) as templates. The circumstances and needs of the Apache project are very similar to ours, so the license/contributor agreement used by the AF will be suitable for EBT with little modifications.
The agreements used by AF grant their foundation full rights to the code/contributions, e.g. the right to use, modify, protect and distribute all contributions, even in commercial context. The granted usage rights are non-revocable and free of charge.
The contributor still remains the owner of his/her contributions though and is free to use his property as he/she sees fit. For example if you create a flag for EBT you're still allowed to use this image on your own website.
For details please see the exact wording of the agreements.
The big advantage of this approach is that the templates used by the Apache Foundation are thoroughly legally checked and "battle proven". We don't have to come up with our own wording and check it for possible loopholes again and again.
The agreements can be found online at http://eurobilltracker.com/license/software-grant.txt" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (for existing code/IP currently used by EBT) and http://eurobilltracker.com/license/icla.txt" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (for future contributions/contributors).
For comparison you can find the templates upon which these agreements are based here and here. The modifications are only cosmetical, i.e. we replaced "Apache Foundation" with "European Association of Eurobilltrackers" and updated the contact information.
Transfer of existing IP
We are using the software-grant agreement for all existing IP currently in use by EBT. This includes code, images, data structures, translations and coordinates.
Please note that note data is not affected at all by this. It remains the property of the user which entered it so we don't need any licensing agreements.
All three administrators of EBT (Philippe, Anssi and Marko) have already signed the software-grant agreement, so EBT is on very stable grounds. It already has full usage rights for most parts of its source code, design and internal structure.
Now we just need to collect usage rights for the remaining IP to be on the safe side. In the next weeks we will try to get in contact with each individual who has contributed to EBT in the past 6 years, i.e. all plotters, translators etc, and ask for permission to continue using their work. (Meanwhile, we assume it's ok with them like it has been in the past years and sneakily use their IP without written permission
)All past contributors should fill out the software-grant.txt license. Please do not forget to sign the document and list your contributions at the end.
You can either send the document by letter to the president of the Association (please ask by PM the address where to send your documents) or a scan to the email address (association@eurobilltracker.com)
Future contributions
Before we can accept contributions in future we kindly ask our users to fill out the ICLA (individual contributor license agreement) and send it back to us. This agreement grants EBT full usage rights to newly submitted IP.
This will mainly affect the Web Dev, Technical Maintenance and probably the communication Working Groups. You only have to sign the ICLA once even if you contribute to different WGs.
Translations and plotting can be handled less bureacratically. Users will have to confirm that they grant EBT full usage rights upon logging in to the web tools. This will work the same way you accept other agreements e.g. when shopping online or installing software, probably through a checkbox.
Thank you,
Nerzhul
