Derek Neighbors wrote: 
PLUG is not a legal entity but AZOTO is.  AZOTO was designed to be the
legal entity behind PLUG.  I would suggest that you deal with the issue of
copyright early in the process.
Agreed.
If you have several developers I do not think you want each author being
the sole holder of their copyright for practical purposes.  It would be my
suggestion that copyright assignment be given to the FSF, AZOTO or another
legal entity like ASULUG.  Each developer would still keep their copyright
authority to what they wrote, but the work as a whole would have an entity
able to defend it if necessary without having to wrangle all the
individual copyright holders.
Also agreed, for critical code segments.  I don't see the need to have assignment for all of the code, so long as we have certain other affidavits from the original author (much as the Linux kernel does).  If AZOTO is able and willing to accept copyright assignment, then I'd prefer to take that route.  Otherwise we'll need to look into some other options.  Regardless of how we handle it, I expect we'll need to have a standard copyright provision in a form that developers sign when requesting commit access.  I suspect we'll also need to include a disclaimer of some sort in the project FAQ that any patch submissions also require relevant affidavits and possibly assignment.

As far as retention of copyright, it doesn't actually work that way. Once copyright is assigned, the author retains authorship rights, but the copyright itself is exclusive to the new owner.  The assignment form should document if any of the rights reserved by copyright are shared/retained by the original author.  The assignment form should also specify that the assigned copyright will be licensed under the GPL, as otherwise the assignee could re-release the copyrighted code under some other license, which remains a subtle threat to the original intent of the author(s) (OpenOffice does this, and many people will not contribute for that reason).

However we decide to handle copyright assignment, it need not be handled right away, as long as we can keep track of the original authors, we can wait a few months before making any kind of final decision on the topic.  That gives the original authors time to see the project progress, and form their own view on the issue, which I feel is pretty important, since the authors should really have the final say in this.

Just a suggestion.

-Derek
  
Then we should wait until phase 2 for tracking donations.  ASULUG is a
legal
entity, and we do give charitable receipts, and we do require demographics
for
funding purposes.  But for now we should focus only on the regular plug
fests
and keep the second half of this as a phase 2 issue.

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005, Alan Dayley wrote:

    
I would believe this to be a must, not only should we be tracking our
volunteers, but also relating them to skill sets, donations, etc.
        
Think
      
of how easy it would be come March of next year when all you have to
        
do
      
is query your database to generate charitable donation receipts (I
        
know,
      
I think like an accountant ;)
        
Just to be clear here: PLUG is not a legal entity and does not track
donations or funds of any kind.  Anything of value given to the group is
not tracked.  PLUG does not accept cash or any instruments of money
since
we have no entity, structure or policy to handle it.

That said, tracking who can do what is a good idea that has been bounced
around for some time.  It would have many purposes even beyond the
group.
For example, Thrum would like to setup a list of people knowledgeable is
various subjects that could be guest lecturers at SCC or other community
college campuses (campi?).

      
In addition, we should also track our customers (ie. those that come
        
to
      
installfest for help)  As accurate information will lead to increased
funding (I am missing out on a bunch of funding because I have no
information on who has been coming to our ASU installfests, -- Then
again, I have very little info on the ASULUG members as well)
        
Again, funding is not the goal.  Helping new "customers" is an excellent
goal.

Alan



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