FSF status

FSF status

[Andrew Lunn]

Hi Jifl

Hows it going with FSF?

Are you still trying to get the eCosCentric copyright assignment
sorted out?

       Thanks
          Andrew

Re: FSF status

[Jonathan Larmour]

Andrew Lunn wrote:
> Hi Jifl
> 
> Hows it going with FSF?
> 
> Are you still trying to get the eCosCentric copyright assignment
> sorted out?

Yes it is still waiting on them, allegedly their legal department. The 
"copyright clerk" Jonas Jacobson replied to me not that long ago seeming 
to forget much of the thousands of words I have already written to him 
(much at his own request) and almost bringing things back to square one. 
He says there are "issues" but then doesn't say what they are. I'm not 
convinced FSF legal have looked at this at all yet. In my view, I have a 
clear and minor change suggested to their standard copyright assignment 
wording, and there has not been any problem mentioned with it, other than 
the fact it isn't the boiler plate copyright assignment.

All in all, I'm moving past "disappointed" to "irritated" in how they're 
dealing with this. Were it not for eCosCentric's public undertaking to get 
this stuff assigned, I'd have thrown in the towel on this ages ago.

The only reason we can't use their standard assignment template is that it 
assigns all code in "eCos" which is something eCosCentric cannot be 
expected to do as eCosCentric develops extensions to eCos which are not to 
be assigned. You would have thought this would be a simple concept, and 
one the FSF would have already had to deal with, but it appears not.

I reckon there would be some surprised people out there if they found out 
that if you assign to the FSF, you assign all code you ever write 
associated with that project, even code you didn't intend to contribute 
and haven't even told them about.

Given that this issue is straightforward and there's nothing secret about 
it, I don't mind forwarding my past correspondence to any maintainer who 
wants it, but I wouldn't want to bore (or irritate) anyone with it unless 
you do.

Anyway, I have been back and forward, and my last missive to them was 
2006-08-25, to which I am still awaiting a response.

Jifl
-- 
eCosCentric    http://www.eCosCentric.com/    The eCos and RedBoot experts
------["The best things in life aren't things."]------      Opinions==mine

Re: FSF status

[Andrew Lunn]

> The only reason we can't use their standard assignment template is that it 
> assigns all code in "eCos" which is something eCosCentric cannot be 
> expected to do as eCosCentric develops extensions to eCos which are not to 
> be assigned.

Are there any other FSF projects which have a commercial company
associated?  Like Wine/crossover office? Could you could find such a
setup which have already been through this process and use there
assignemt. Ask the company for a copy of what they used. You would
then have a strong position to argue from that the FSF accepted this
exact wording before, so there is no need for the legal people to be
really involved.....

       Andrew

Re: FSF status

[Jonathan Larmour]

Andrew Lunn wrote:
>>The only reason we can't use their standard assignment template is that it 
>>assigns all code in "eCos" which is something eCosCentric cannot be 
>>expected to do as eCosCentric develops extensions to eCos which are not to 
>>be assigned.
> 
> 
> Are there any other FSF projects which have a commercial company
> associated?  Like Wine/crossover office?

I've looked up that one, and WINE is not assigned to the FSF. I'll try to 
think of some other companies where the main project is assigned to the 
FSF but other bits wouldn't be. I know that Red Hat and Novell/SuSE do 
have a blanket assignment anyway, so not them.

> Could you could find such a
> setup which have already been through this process and use there
> assignemt. Ask the company for a copy of what they used. You would
> then have a strong position to argue from that the FSF accepted this
> exact wording before, so there is no need for the legal people to be
> really involved.....

I've already asked this of the FSF directly in prior correspondence and 
they claimed no-one's ever raised this before.

Jifl
-- 
eCosCentric    http://www.eCosCentric.com/    The eCos and RedBoot experts
------["The best things in life aren't things."]------      Opinions==mine

FSF status

[Gary Thomas]

Jonathan,

Time for another ping?

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
Gary Thomas                 |  Consulting for the
MLB Associates              |    Embedded world
------------------------------------------------------------

Re: FSF status

[Jonathan Larmour]

Gary Thomas wrote:
> Jonathan,
> 
> Time for another ping?

I've pinged the FSF and asked them if they've had a response from RH. Mark 
S asked me about the state last week (or maybe the week before) and I 
filled him in. He said he was going to chase it up internally. Mark, any 
joy? Or are you in the same boat as me :).

Jifl
-- 
eCosCentric    http://www.eCosCentric.com/    The eCos and RedBoot experts
--[ "You can complain because roses have thorns, or you ]--
--[  can rejoice because thorns have roses." -Lincoln   ]-- Opinions==mine

Re: FSF status

[Mark Salter]

On Wed, 2005-05-04 at 16:03 +0100, Jonathan Larmour wrote:
> Gary Thomas wrote:
> > Jonathan,
> > 
> > Time for another ping?
> 
> I've pinged the FSF and asked them if they've had a response from RH. Mark 
> S asked me about the state last week (or maybe the week before) and I 
> filled him in. He said he was going to chase it up internally. Mark, any 
> joy? Or are you in the same boat as me :).
> 

Inquiries have been made, but no response so far.

--Mark

FSF status

[Gary Thomas]

Jonathan,

Have you made any progress with the FSF changeover?

-- 
Gary Thomas <gary@mlbassoc.com>
MLB Associates

Re: FSF status

[Jonathan Larmour]

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Gary Thomas wrote:
> Jonathan,
> 
> Have you made any progress with the FSF changeover?

Not for a while. I last prodded them on the 8th (I've attached my last 
message FYI). There's some speculation the FSF is tied up with SCO (who 
have now expanded their claims to encompass the validity of the GPL in 
general:  and now there's also Linksys. Both are discussed here: 
http://lwn.net/Articles/50985/

However there are some steps we can take now other than the assignment to 
at least work on the vendor independence. In particular, to try and move 
as many references as possible from http://sources.redhat.com/ecos/ to 
http://ecos.sourceware.org/ including list addresses; at least as much as 
we can.

But we haven't formally agreed that everyone's okay with that. I had hoped 
before for something like ecos.gnu.org, but the FSF's position is such 
that we would only be able to get ecos.nongnu.org at present. So 
ecos.sourceware.org is the only sensible way forward IMHO as I doubt we 
want to change home pages again if and when we become official GNU. Unless 
there are objections, I'll assume that's the official stance now and we 
can look at fixing up references and set up a RedirectMatch in the httpd 
config to forward to ecos.sourceware.org.

Jifl
-- 
eCosCentric    http://www.eCosCentric.com/    The eCos and RedBoot experts
--["No sense being pessimistic, it wouldn't work anyway"]-- Opinions==mine

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From: Jonathan Larmour <jifl@jifvik.org>
To: FSF General Contact Address <info@fsf.org>
Subject: Re: [gnu.org #25869] eCos as an FSF project?
Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2003 13:34:44 +0100
Message-ID: <3F840464.6050309@jifvik.org>

Hi, it's been over two months now since I've heard anything, so I'm just 
wondering what the status is?

I really want to get to the point where the FSF is accepting assignments 
for us (and we're prepared to do so). All this time, more work is being 
assigned to Red Hat instead.

Thanks,

Jifl

Jonathan Larmour wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I know you'll have a backlog, but I'm being pestered to resolve this as 
> time ticks merrily on. Any chance someone could look at this?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Jifl
> 
> Jonathan Larmour wrote:
> 
>> FSF General Contact Address wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 01:23:16PM -0400, Jonathan Larmour via RT wrote:
>>>
>>>> Have you had any success in relation to the below mail? I'm just 
>>>> wondering how we can try and push on as we are still keen to do 
>>>> this, and are more than a little annoyed ourselves that it's being 
>>>> held up by Red Hat :-|.
>>
>>
>>
>> Hi Brett,
>>
>> I realised I should have replied earlier, sorry.
>>
>>> I am very sorry for the late response to this message.  Since we are a
>>> non-profit with very limited resources, messages to this address 
>>> often get
>>> backlogged, and we are always struggling to catch up.
>>
>>
>>
>> As a startup company working with OSS, I can vouch for the lack of 
>> available time!
>>
>>> So long as eCos is following GNU policies, we are willing to accept its
>>> copyright, even if it does not officially become GNU software.
>>
>>
>>
>> Excellent! In that case, be prepared to receive some assignments soon.
>>
>>  >  As such, so
>>
>>> long as you are doing that, it seems like we can begin a process 
>>> which will
>>> go something like this: we will take copyright on the eCos software --
>>> excluding the documentation -- as a non-GNU program.  Once we can 
>>> establish
>>> with Red Hat that we hold copyright for most of eCos,
>>
>>
>>
>> That may take some time to establish as core parts of eCos don't 
>> change radically that quickly - people want stability in an embedded 
>> OS. Plus to date the policy has been assignments to Red Hat for all 
>> contributions, excepting the eCos maintainers' own work (we were able 
>> to trust ourselves to assign to the FSF later!).
>>
>>> we will approach them
>>> about assigning their copyright on the work, including the 
>>> documentation,
>>> to us as well.  While we are in those negotiations, eCos can be 
>>> evaluated
>>> for inclusion as part of the GNU project.  With some luck, those 
>>> processes
>>> will hopefully finish around the same time, at which point we can accept
>>> copyright assignments for the rest of the documentation and have it 
>>> be part
>>> of GNU eCos as well.
>>
>>
>>
>> Can you not accept the assignment for the documentation anyway, even 
>> if under a non-free licence? Otherwise we have to have people set up 
>> two assignments in order to contribute to eCos - one to the FSF for 
>> code, and one to Red Hat for documentation (and of course all code 
>> should have documentation ;-)).
>>
>> Obviously if we didn't ask for assignments for documentation at all, 
>> then we wouldn't be able to assign it to the FSF down the road either, 
>> so this way when we get Red Hat to Do The Right Thing, the FSF will 
>> then have everything it needs.
>>
>> The idea is that this is purely a temporary arrangement with the 
>> obvious goal being the FSF's complete ownership of eCos. If that 
>> wasn't the goal and we were prepared to be content with the status 
>> quo, I wouldn't ask.
>>
>> Hmm... does this mean the the FSF is no longer pressing Red Hat for 
>> changes to the documentation licence (or assigning it)? Were you able 
>> to contact anyone in RH and get a response?
>>
>>> As far as I can tell, there is only one outstanding issue.  Earlier, you
>>> indicated that you would like some form of guarantee that we will not
>>> remove the license exception from eCos without due cause and prior
>>> discussion with the eCos maintainers.  Can you give me a better idea 
>>> of how
>>> you would like to see this promise made, and how it could 
>>> specifically be
>>> worded?  We want to be sure that everyone is on the same page with this.
>>
>>
>>
>> Sure. The important fact is that it would be a publically recorded 
>> declaration, as we know the FSF wouldn't backtrack on that (we do 
>> trust you really :-)) because of the bad press. I'm thinking of 
>> something along the lines of:
>>
>> -=-=-=-
>> The Free Software Foundation understands the value to the eCos project 
>> of a licence that allows application code to be linked with eCos 
>> without being covered by the GNU General Public License. The Free 
>> Software Foundation undertakes to preserve the spirit of the current 
>> form of the eCos licence, and will modify the licence only with due 
>> cause and after discussion and agreement with the eCos maintainers.
>> -=-=-=-
>>
>> Of course this is unlikely to ever be an issue, but we're just 
>> covering ourselves, if nothing else, from worries from the eCos 
>> developer community when we publicise the FSF's new role with eCos.
>>
>> Jifl
> 
> 
> 


-- 
--["No sense being pessimistic, it wouldn't work anyway"]-- Opinions==mine