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RE: Procedure to release GPL code for eCos



-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Lunn [mailto:andrew@lunn.ch] 
Sent: Monday, March 10, 2008 7:25 PM
To: Aditya Vaidya
Cc: ecos-discuss@ecos.sourceware.org
Subject: Re: [ECOS] Procedure to release GPL code for eCos

On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 07:14:06PM +0530, Aditya Vaidya wrote:
>
> Andrew Lunn wrote:
>>> So the copyright assignment would only come into the picture for new  
>>> code.     
>>
>> Correct. You could assign your modification, which you have copyright
>> to, but without the rest of the code they are probably useless.
>>   
> Agreed. So how would that part of the code need to be licensed to allow  
> public use. The modified code is all in the same file as the eCos code,  
> so does it automatically come under the eCos license? Is no assignment  
> necessary for the mod GPL?

I think you don't understand what an assignment is and why we do it.

An assignment gives the ownership of the code to somebody else. For
eCos this is the FSF. By giving the code to the FSF we gain some legal
protection. If company X claims to own some code in eCos it could
start ask for royalties, licensing deals etc. The FSF won't do this,
so code assigned to the FSF makes it safe for others to use knowing
they will never have to pay a license fee etc.

To make the code publically available does not need an assignment.

To make your code available to the public all you need to do is
license your code such that the public can use it. eCos uses a mod GPL
license. The MIT or the BSD license is used by other people. You could
just make a public statement your code is released to the public
domain.

If the mod GPL is O.K. for you, you don't need to do anything since
that license header is already there. I guess you will also be adding
a GPL header to cover the GPL code. So if you want your modifications
to be covered by GPL, then again you don't need to do anything.

So in such a case, where I keep the existing headers, will my modifications
automatically be licensed under the GPL or mod GPL as the case may be?
Because that is what I would like.

   Andrew




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