This is the mail archive of the ecos-discuss@sources.redhat.com mailing list for the eCos project.


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]
Other format: [Raw text]

GPL - was: Re: EB40A port is done!


Peter Vandenabeele <peter@mind.be> writes:

> On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 05:50:14PM -0700, David N. Welton wrote:
> > Doug Fraser <dfraser@photuris.com> writes:

> > > Even if you contribute directly to www.gnu.org you need to
> > > perform a copywrite assignment and possibly provide a disclaimer
> > > signed by your employer.

> > > http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain_7.html#SEC7

> > > So, no, simply having GPL'ed the code does not absolve the
> > > maintainer from this responsibility. Having non-assigned
> > > copywrites poisons GPL'ed code.

> > Well, things like Linux are probably defensible, despite having
> > lots of 'poisoned' code.  The bigger problem, maybe, for an
> > organization like GNU, is the possibility of changing the
> > copyright in the future.

> With all respect, I believe this to be incorrect.

What, exactly, is incorrect with what I wrote?

Other than that, I agree with everything you say.

> I have the impression this concept (of a mixed license and push by a
> central commercial entity) works in certain cases and is defendable
> if implemented in a "fair" manner, with a correct balance between
> the interests of the Free Software community and of the commercial
> entity.

Right, I think that no one begrudges someone making money off the code
if they've put a lot of work into it, especially because we can still
use it under an open source license.  Knowing who that someone is,
though, would be nice.  Redhat?  Some new entity?

> One of the elements of such balance seems to me that contributors
> that are not associated with the central, maintaining organization
> need to have the right to set up at any time a separate CVS server
> where they can submit patches and build a forked version, in case
> they do not agree with the policy set forward by the central
> maintaining organization (especially if that organization would
> request Copyright Assignment as a pre-condition for allowing the
> patch in the central CVS server).

I think that you can always do that with the code you have now.  It's
under the GPL.  What you don't have is the guarantee that the code
will always be GPL in the future.

-- 
David N. Welton
   Consulting: http://www.dedasys.com/
     Personal: http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/
Free Software: http://www.dedasys.com/freesoftware/
   Apache Tcl: http://tcl.apache.org/

-- 
Before posting, please read the FAQ: http://sources.redhat.com/fom/ecos
and search the list archive: http://sources.redhat.com/ml/ecos-discuss


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]