From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 1484 invoked by alias); 19 Dec 2002 19:52:43 -0000 Mailing-List: contact ecos-maintainers-help@sources.redhat.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: ecos-maintainers-owner@sources.redhat.com Received: (qmail 1438 invoked from network); 19 Dec 2002 19:52:41 -0000 Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 11:52:00 -0000 From: "Frank Ch. Eigler" To: ecos-maintainers@sources.redhat.com Subject: Re: Future code ownership Message-ID: <20021219145229.A15709@redhat.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5.1i X-SW-Source: 2002-12/txt/msg00023.txt.bz2 Hi - Speaking merely as an interested individual sympathetic outsider, I wonder if jifl correctly understands SPI's relationship to other projects it is associated with: > 6) Software in the Public Interest, Inc. is a US not-for-profit > organisation. Its goals are to advance open > source. They are well known already as the copyright holders of many > well known projects like Debian Linux, GNOME, LSB as well as owners of > the Open Source marque, and so on. A quick cursory browse of a bunch of pieces of the gnome distribution shows copyright notices from all sorts of players, FSF, Red Hat, and many individuals. I didn't actually see any SPI copyright notices. There were a few listed drawbacks of a mixed-copyright future for eCos. Maybe they are not too serious: The problem of lack of single copyright enforcement agent would not be diminished if some of the new code was assigned to SPI or somesuch, for there would still be Red Hat (C) code in there. (Or is one of the ideas to get Red Hat to reassign to SPI too?) The problem of uncertainty about the trustworthiness of contributors to submit code unimpeded by corporate copyright is not going to go away in any case. You might try requiring submitters to specify the appropriate copyright notice for the new code, in effect making it their onus to determine/state corporate impact. You could then take it at face value. The problem of shipping relicensed (non-GPL) eCos derivatives is probably moot unless Red Hat Officials Of Great Highness see it fit to come to an agreement with you guys. (I clearly have no clue about this.) If no such agreement occurs, then license revenue matters become moot. (... or you could rewrite all that existing code! :-) - FChE