About
OSSLine is a Silicon Valley-based group that supports open source software and the open web. OSSLine sponsors community meetings and assists a variety of open source projects with coordination, legal risk management, and technical issues.
OSSLine identifies and pursues opportunities for collaboration amongst the projects it aids and with other projects, organizations, and individuals. Cooperation in the form of open standards, integration and interoperability allow multiple projects to provide greater-than-additive benefits. Openness and the use of standards prevent lock-in, allow the use of pre-existing solutions, and foster a diverse set of software options.
Open source projects that use a collaborative development model face the challenge of managing risk related to intellectual property while allowing contributions from a variety of sources. If contributed code is not licensed or assigned in a way that allows distribution under the open source license used by the project, users of the software as well as the project itself could be the target of a patent and/or copyright lawsuits. OSSLine uses contributor license agreements (CLA's), a tool frequently used by open source communities to address these risks. By executing a CLA, contributors explicitly allow their contributions to be used in the software while retaining all rights to their creation. CLA's have the added benefit of reminding individuals to be aware of potential claims on their creations by their employers.
Being free/open source isn't as simple as letting people see your source code. The debate over which license to use has garnered the most publicity and can certainly be productive, but it's equally important to look at other aspects such as cathedral/bazaar, project direction, and interoperability. When appropriate, OSSLine sets up and administers development environments with tools such as SVN, Trac, IRC, and mailing lists to allow anyone to view and submit tickets, browse and checkout the source code, and discuss problems and improvements.