RE: [ECOS] Are copyright assignments detrimental to eCos?

["Chris Zimman" <czimman@bloomberg.com>]

> Does this mean that if we contribute some files to eCos under
> this license and they end up in eCos Pro, any modifications to
> them made by eCosCentric would have to be published and could be
> merged back to the open version of eCos. The last sentence seems
> to indicate this, I just want be sure.

If eCosCentric owns the copyright, they can change the license at any time.  
If you make a contribution under GPL, I believe they still require an
assignment 
statement if it's not a standalone piece of code (please correct me if I'm
wrong here).

> I have looked at the files in eCos Pro, and majority of it has
> the GPL license with the linking exception. Is there anything that
> would prevent me from merging updated files from eCos Pro back
> to the open CVS version?

OK, this is an interesting issue, which I've thought about a lot recently.

So in the case of the tree that I have with ARM EABI support, it was derived
from an eCosPro tree.
I was considering putting parts of that code back into anon CVS, but I
thought about it for a while, 
and this is what I arrived at:

In my opinion, eCosCentric as an entity, is doing the most to help and
support eCos at the moment.
They rely on people paying them for eCosPro in order to put food on the
table.  I am in the situation
where I can do enhancements to eCos as part of my job, but it's not my
primary job, and I get paid 
either way.  I want to help the community at large, but not at the expense of
hurting eCosCentric, 
as I think that will hurt everyone in the long run.  Without eCosCentric,
there'd be nowhere to
go for eCos support when you really need it.  Sure, something else could
spring up in their place, 
but it would face all of the same issues.

In an ideal world, the publicly available eCos could have all the features of
eCosPro and people 
would still pay eCosCentric for support.  Unfortunately though, things don't
really seem to go that
way.  If people can get something entirely for free (as in beer), that's
usually the end of it.

As I understand it, they have the intention of releasing the code back into
anon CVS at some point, 
but they need to recoup their development costs on it first.  It's not an
ideal situation from all 
perspectives, but it's reality.

What I've elected to do instead is to honor a sort of gentlemen's agreement,
where I'm not releasing 
the GPL'd bits from eCosPro back into the tree.  When eCosCentric feels the
time is right, I'll let 
them do it.  This includes the enhancements that I've made.  I've contributed
them back to eCosCentric 
if they wish to include them.  I don't think their fees are in any way
egregious compared to what you'd 
pay for a commercial RTOS ($40K+ USD for a base license), so I'm happy to
continue to support them.

Anyhow, that's my $.02 on the issue.

--Chris

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