Re: some kind of week...

[Jonathan Larmour <jifl@eCosCentric.com>]

Gary Thomas wrote:
> It seems that I've done it again :-(  Not our of any intent,
> I've offended the eCos world (or at least part of it).
> 
> If my note to ecos-patches had never used the word "logo",
> none of this would have ever been an issue.  Honestly, I was
> just following prior practice when adding this "logo" to
> the RedBoot for the port I am working on (_for_ Mind).  It
> has been done many times before, always to accolades.  Now,
> in these changed times, it creates controversy.

Don't worry about it IHMO. I think everyone's been perceiving more intent 
than there has actually been :-). I don't think it matters that much that 
these things happen (and will probably continue to do so to some 
extent!)... what matters is that the maintainers can take any commercial 
hat off and Do The Right Thing. With that happening, everything can be 
resolved amicably (even if opinions differ!).

It's early days, and just like a toddler occasionally we'll be pushing the 
limits to see how far they should go :-).

> Perhaps we should insist that the eCos *public* repository
> become and remain vendor neutral.  We could go and find
> the places where there is any hint of commercial involvement
> and clean this out.  I truly don't have a problem with that.

As stated elsewhere less publically, I think attribution is okay in 
certain cirumstances, but yes as a general rule we should clean out 
commercial involvement.

> Of course, I'd want to start with this one:
>     RedBoot(tm) bootstrap and debug environment [RAM]
>     Non-certified release, version UNKNOWN - built 17:41:25, Feb 25 2003
>     
>     Platform: NMI uEngine uE250 (XScale PXA250) 
>     Copyright (C) 2000, 2001, 2002, Red Hat, Inc.
>     
> Please unruffle your feathers and let's decide how this should
> be handled, with civility.

Hah! Interestingly I just mentioned this last night on eCosCentric lists 
before bringing it up publically, in particular since I noticed changing 
the package version string to 2_0b1 made RedBoot report that it was a Red 
Hat certified release!

My opinion is that the (C) msesage should just be dropped, particularly if 
we did eventually did go the "no copyright assignment" approach. Although 
maybe we have to be mindful of the GPL 2(c):

     c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively
     when run, you must cause it, when started running for such
     interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an
     announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a
     notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide
     a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under
     these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this
     License.  (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but
     does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on
     the Program is not required to print an announcement.)

I would like to hope that "not normally print an announcement" means that 
removing the existing Copyright message will make RedBoot compliant.

It's probably not such an issue for host tools where the size of scrollbar 
on a Help->About doesn't make much difference, although it would be a bit 
of a pain to always add more names every time someone contributed 
something. Hmm.

I don't think we should resolve this for the beta as we're a bit too close 
now, but along with other licence issues, this will need resolving for 2.0 
final.

Jifl
-- 
eCosCentric    http://www.eCosCentric.com/    The eCos and RedBoot experts
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