Add contributing license

[go-spatial]

Add contributing license

[pnorman]

I dislike CLAs and don't use them for my projects, for a couple reasons. CLAs discourage casual contributions.

I would not sign a CLA that gave a company the right to relicense without consent. In some cases I might reluctantly sign one with an established FOSS organization (e.g. FSF[1], osgeo, Apache) where they can only relicense under another FOSS license.

I would sign a DCO like Linux uses, and that's the more modern way to do things as far as I can tell.
https://about.gitlab.com/2017/11/01/gitlab-switches-to-dco-license/ is relevant.

[1]: The FSF is copyright assignment, not a CLA, but my reservations are similar with both.

[jj0hns0n]

we should setup clahub probably

[ARolek]

I just read up on CLAHub and it seems to me that it helps with managing a contributing license. I think this will become more important as the project evolves but we should consider how the increased administration will impact early contributions.

[gdey]

We should this sooner rather then later. I got a few people interested in the project at gopher con, don't know if they will want to commit. But we should make it as easy as possible.

[ARolek]

@gdey have you ever implemented or contributed to a project with the CLAHub license? It looks like there is more friction, not less.

[gdey]

I have not. This is the first time I'm hearing about CLAHub. Most project just are MIT or what not. I know the larger ones do want you to sign a contributing license, so that the code still belongs to them. This make it easier if they are sold or want to change the terms of the license. Otherwise every person who has every contributed who's lines are there has to agree to the change. Or something like that. I could be wrong about this; but this is my impression.

[jj0hns0n]

This is low priority for now, can deal with it when we actually have contributors.

[ARolek]

Possible alternative: https://cla-assistant.io/

[gdey]

We should spend some time on this issue. As the project is growing this is going to be more important.
Current our contributes are:

@ARolek
@gdey
@PetersonGIS
@JivanAmara
@erictheise
@pnorman
@mojodna
@sacontreras
@paulmach
@russss

If for some reason we need to change licenses or change the terms and conditions we will have to contact each and everyone, to get their approval.