[ On Wednesday, March 10, 1999 at 16:34:30 (-0800), Jason Thorpe wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: NetBSD Copyright 
>
> On Wed, 10 Mar 1999 18:50:37 -0500 (EST) 
>  woods@most.weird.com (Greg A. Woods) wrote:
> 
>  > > Actually, technically, "contributing to TNF" means assigning copyright.
>  > 
>  > That's a technicality I won't get into....
> 
> Regardless of if you wish to discuss it or not, that is, in fact, the case.
> 
> Actually, let me clarify that a little... contributing _CODE_ to TNF means
> assigning copyright of that code to TNF.  It's the same way w/ the FSF.

OK, yes, if you "contribute" in what might be called the legal sense of
the word then you're going to be assigning your copyright.

However there's a very critical difference between TNF and FSF in this
respect -- with the latter your contribution will not be accepted unless
you have signed a physical statement that assigns your copyright to the
FSF (either specifically for a given "contribution", or generally for
all published works).  I know all about this -- I had a long discussion
with RMS about it before I assigned my patches to the FSF.

However the sense I meant was where you "contribute" your work to be
distributed under the umbrella of FSF, and you use the terms of the GPL,
but you retain ownership of the copyright.  There are many megabytes of
source code available on ftp.gnu.org that are not owned by FSF.

> The _INTENT_ you have of forcing people to mention you in the install
> notes, regardless if they mention your LM78 driver, is one of the things
> I'm objecting to!
> 
> Let's pretend I'm a router vendor, and I happen to be using NetBSD/i386
> on a machine that happens to have an LM78 to monitor CPU temperature, and
> I happen to be using those facilities in my router product.  You're saying
> I have to mention you in my router's install guide or other accompanying
> documentation.

Absolutely.  If some binary-only product includes something of mine then
I want acknowledgement (since I'm getting nothing else out of the deal),
and I don't care how tiny or insignificant my contribution is.

Actually what I'm most specifically concerned about are the situations
where my code is included in an unreadable (by humans) archive of a
collective work, or when a binary-only collective work includes my code
but doesn't include manual page sources and/or header files which
contain my entire copyright license.  I.e. my clause #3 is really only
intended to cover the cases that clause #1 and clause #2 don't already
cover.

If you've got a better wording for terms that meet my intent then I'm
all ears....

> As a vendor, I don't want to do that.

OK, then don't use my code.  In fact I require you not to use my code if
you're not going to give me visible acknowledgement of its use!  :-)

If TNF feels that vendors who use NetBSD will be pissed off by having to
meet the requirements of the various copyrights covering components of
the systems then TNF must make the decision to not use my code either.

In any case that's why I was willing, if absolutely necessary, to change
the terms to:

 * 3. The following acknowledgement must appear in printed documentation
 * accompanying a physical distribution of a collective work including
 * this software, and must appear in an ASCII file accompanying an
 * electronic distribution of a collective work including this software:
 *
 *        This product includes software developed by the NetBSD
 *        Foundation, Inc. and its contributors.
 *

so that the same sentence TNF requires will indeed cover my own notice.

Actually if the above is deemed the only acceptable way of approaching
this then I will draft a TNF specific license that permits TNF and
subsequent users of the TNF collective works to use the above sentence,
but which requires all other collective works to use the original
sentence, even though I'll probably need a lawyer to get the wording
exactly right on such a complex license.

Like I said before -- I'm willing to be very flexible about this, just
so long as my minimum requirements are met and so long as I retain
ownership of my copyright.  I do want to support NetBSD (and thus TNF),
but I'm not going to sell out to TNF any more than I would to the FSF.
Call me a code warrior, a mercenary, or whatever -- I'm not giving up
ownership in this case, and in cases where I do I'm more likely to give
it up to the Public Domain or even the FSF than to anyone else.  I
certainly respect the rights and wishes of those who do want to assign
their copyrights, and I expect them to respect my rights and my wishes
not to give up my copyright ownership.

> No, you are wrong.  "...advertising materials mentioning features or use..."
> 
> If I never mention your LM78 driver, I never have to mention you.  That is
> the key difference.

Let me assure you that any careful lawyer who reads even the following
(taken from today's src/sys/dev/isa/boca.c):

 * 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
 *    must display the following acknowledgement:
 *	This product includes software developed by Charles M. Hannum.

will require that the above sentence be included in the documentation
just to be sure they cover their behinds, even if they never explicitly
mention Boca support.  I've been in the situation where lawyers tell me
this several times in the past.

Besides, if TNF puts the above sentence in the INSTALL document to cover
the mention of Boca support in that same document then IMNSHO there's
absolutely no reason for a vendor wishing to use NetBSD to complain
since all the work of collecting such notices is already done for them
and they need only copy the notices from the INSTALL document and put
them in some appendix in their own documentation.  Case closed, lawyers
satisfied, etc.

> Actually, before I resigned from Core, there were some dicussions about
> how we were going to pursue getting as many copyrights as possible
> assigned to TNF... but I don't know what the status of that is right now.

I'd be somewhat surprised and dismayed if there were no such discussions
(that would indicate you weren't fulfilling your fudiciary
requirements).  If I were on the board of a corporation creating a
collective work like NetBSD I'd also try to find ways to gain as much
ownership of all the parts as possible too.  RMS and The FSF do the
same.

However I will be very sad to see the day when TNF no longer allows
"contributors" to retain ownership of their contributions.  Such
requirements would be a dramatic abuse of power in circumstances like
this and would be an abuse of the copyright laws which otherwise offer
the concept of a collective work to enable such retention of ownership,
not to mention somewhat hypocritical given the current state of
copyrights in NetBSD.

Perhaps I should start putting "Copyright assigned to the Public Domain"
into my NetBSD patches and minor submissions such as pkgsrc modules.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <gwoods@acm.org>      <robohack!woods>
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