Re: eCos licence

[Jonathan Larmour <jifl@jifvik.org>]

Hi guys,

I'm just wondering if any of you have had a chance to look at the below 
message? It only takes the right person to say "yes" for it to happen :-).

I've also added Eric B in the hope that maybe he's the right person? Sorry 
for the wide posting, but I'd just like to get this sorted one way or the 
other.

Jifl

Jonathan Larmour wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'd like to ask you for some help.... us eCos guys have now decided that 
> it's probably best for everyone in the community if eCos becomes a GNU 
> project. We have approached the FSF, and they are willing to do this. 
> This is a very positive move for eCos as I hope you'd all agree.
> 
> However we have one stumbling block which we need Red Hat's help with: 
> the current eCos documentation is licenced under the Open Publication 
> Licence <http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/> (along with the OPL option 
> "B" that prohibits publication in paper form without the copyright 
> holder's permission). The current documentation is a mixture of stuff 
> that is copyrighted by individual eCos maintainers, which we can deal 
> with no problem, but also copyright Red Hat.
> 
> Unfortunately the FSF do not find this documentation licence acceptable, 
> and so we would be very grateful if Red Hat could do one of two things: 
> either declare that RH is willing to licence it under the Free 
> Documentation Licence <http://www.fsf.org/copyleft/fdl.html>, or, even 
> better, assign copyright for the documentation to the FSF. Obviously 
> assigning to the FSF is something Red Hat is pretty familiar with! But 
> either option is fine.
> 
> As I'm sure you agree, right now there's no real value to Red Hat in the 
> current documentation licence as it now includes work by others, and so 
> Red Hat would now be bound by the same OPL restrictions too!
> 
> So we'd be grateful if you could help with this. Removing this stumbling 
> block would mean that eCos and RedBoot both have a secure and bright 
> future with the FSF.
> 
> Thanks in advance!
> 
> Jifl


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