OpenSubsystems

Sense of ownership

Even though (or maybe because) OpenSubsystems is open source project, it has to pay special attention to the licensing and copyright issues related to the code and binary products. This is due to the fact that all the code shared by various contributors has to stay open source and freely available to maintain the benefit of shared resources, experiences and skills. At the same time, the sense of ownership of the donated code needs to remain with the original author but it also has to be extend to the community and to project, to which the code was donated to.

To address the issue of the code ownership, OpenSubsystems adapted model of joint copyright used by such established open source projects, such as OpenOffice.org. You can find more information about different licenses OpenSubsystems is available under at the Licensing page.

Joint copyright

The joint copyright concept si quite simple. Copyright to any contribution that is included in official OpenSubsystems source tree is jointly assigned to the author of the contribution as well as OpenSubsystems s.r.o., which is responsible for maintaining and releasing the project deliverables. This assignment is performed by filling out Joint Copyright Assignment form before the contribution is included in OpenSubsystems.

The advantage and main purpose of joint copyright is that, both the author of the contribution as well as OpenSubsystems s.r.o. retain all rights to use, modify and redistribute the contributed work. The joint copyright assignment once it is performed is irrevocable in order to protect the consistency of the code base for all other community members and users. You can find more information about the concept of Joint Copyright Assignment at the OpenOffice FAQs with the single difference that in case of this project OpenSubsystems s.r.o performs the role of project maintainer.

Contribution process

1. The contribution process starts of course when an individual or organization decides to contribute a body or work into OpenSubsystems. This can be either original work that follows standards set for the OpenSubsystems deliverables or it can be fix for an existing defect or implementation of one of the feature requests documented in the SourceForge project.
2. One the code or documentation is ready, the preferred way to deliver this is to submit it either as an attachment to the existing bug or feature request. If this is original work, the best approach is to submit a patch into the dedicated tracker.
3. If this is the first contribution, the author has to send the signed Joint Copyright Assignment form to one of the contact addresses. Without signed Joint Copyright Assignment form no contribution will be accepted and included in the OpenSubsystems source tree due to reasons discussed above.
4. Once the contribution is accepted and the signed Joint Copyright Assignment form is received, the contribution will be included in the OpenSubsystems source tree available immediately through the source control system and released with the next official release of the project.