Re: Re: Rsync over ssh (pulling from Cygwin to Linux) stalls..

[Christopher Faylor <cgf-no-personal-reply-please@cygwin.com>]

On Wed, Aug 16, 2006 at 09:22:52AM -0400, Williams, Gerald S (Jerry) wrote:
>mwoehlke wrote:
>>So...  are we just disagreeing over "safe", or are you actually telling
>>me that RH (and thus Cygwin) would *refuse* to incorporate public
>>domain code?
>
>In fact that is the case, and it is a shame.
>
>In RH's defense, there is some legal vagueness around public domain
>code (and a few strange laws that add to the confusion by trying to
>accommodate shareware and such).  But one would think that as a huge
>proponent of open source development, RH lawyers would have figured it
>out by now.

What Red Hat lawyers (and I, the IANAL, for that matter) have figured
out is that if someone sticks a "Public Domain" tag on a piece of
software, you still have to go through due diligence to find out if the
software is actually encumbered or not since anyone with a text editor
can put anything they like in a file.  That would mean getting a release
from the person's company.

So, I don't see how public domain buys you much.

Oddly enough the FSF has the same requirements.

>>The irony of course is that the availability of a commercial license
>>makes it look like Daryl's fears are in fact very well founded.  :-)
>
>I don't care if they want to make money, but their current policy
>actually prevents code from being released into the public domain.
>Even if their real motivation is not monetary, that is a consequence
>that I'd rather avoid.

Again, Red Hat isn't doing anything different than the FSF.

Red Hat does not have any interest in the "public domain".  Where Cygwin
is concerned, they need to be absolutely certain that they either own
the code or that the code's license is conformant with their needs.

cgf