RE: EP93XX and TS-72XX

["H Hartley Sweeten" <hartleys at visionengravers dot com>]

On Monday, September 28, 2009 9:37 AM, John Dallaway wrote:
> Hi Christian
> 
> Christian Gagneraud wrote:
> 
>> John Dallaway wrote:
>> 
>>> I suggest you talk with Technologic Systems about this in the first
>>> instance since all code contributions are subject to copyright
>>> assignment.
>> 
>> Correct me if I'm wrong, to be integrated upstream, the copyright have
>> to be granted to the FSF, is that right?
>
> Correct. Copyright in all contributions to the public eCos sources must
> be assigned to the FSF as part of the contribution process.
>
>> Ecos v2.0 was copyright Red Hat
>> and licensed under the eCos License and/or the GPL, and now v3.0 is
>> copyright FSF and is licensed under the GPL only(?).
>
> Not exactly. The run-time sources in eCos 2.0 and later releases are
> licensed under a modified version of the GPL with a very important
> exception clause. Ref:
>
>   http://ecos.sourceware.org/license-overview.html
>
>> By greping through the patch I've generated myself, i've found:
>> 
>> Mixed copyright:
>>  - Cirrus logic (from bug report 1000739)
>
> The contributor will assign copyright to the FSF as part of the
> contribution process. Hopefully no problem here.
>
>>  - Red Hat, Inc. (I guess these are files copied over and then adapted)
>
> Red Hat have assigned all their copyright in eCos to the FSF since eCos
> 2.0 was released. No problem.
>
>>  - Technologic System (at least redboot/version.c, where they've added a
>> copyright print statement)
>
> All changes and additions made by Technologic Systems would need to be
> identified (regardless of whether they've added a copyright line) and
> assigned to the FSF.
>
>> Authors and contributor:
>>  - gthomas
>>  - hmt
>>  - Jesse Off
>>  - jordan
>>  - jskov
>>  - nickg
>>  - Travis C. Furrer
>>  - rgorsegn
>
> The above contributors will have already assigned copyright directly or
> indirectly to the FSF.
>
>> So the best would be to ask TS if they can provide officially a patch
>> against an official version of ecos with all the copyright statements
>> updated.
>
> For avoidance of doubt, the current holders of copyright in the platform
> port, relevant drivers and any other contributed code (presumably
> Technologic Systems) would also need to provide a copyright assignment. Ref:
>
>   http://ecos.sourceware.org/assign.html
>
> A patch against the HEAD of the eCos CVS repository is preferable.
>
> John Dallaway

The Technologic Systems patch is probably based on the original ep93xx port
from Cirrus Logic.  Brian Austin put the patch into bugzilla on 4/10/2009
http://bugs.ecos.sourceware.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1000739 but the FSF paperwork
never got filed.  Around 9/17/2009 I asked about this again and he said that
the necessary paperwork was going out.  Hopefully the eCos group will be
notified soon and the patch can get merged.  It will need quite a bit of
cleanup but everything "is" there to get RedBoot functioning on the ep93xx.

Regards,
Hartley