Nicely stated Julian.

At 01:53 AM 9/14/99 +1000, Julian Assange wrote:
[a clear analysis of Mr. Wood's possible motivations]

And this:
>I completely reject the notion that providing such acknowledgements
>is a burden. However finding then legaling every damned home grown
>copyright *is*. But it's a burden to a handful of third-party
>resellers. DEC's adoption of netbsd for the shark and following
>copyright audit, produced a 750k combined copyright file, and must
>have involved months of extremely tedious work. 

Having done something similar (followed all the copyrights to insure
compliance) I agree strongly with the issue of making it easier for
"commercial" type people to adopt NetBSD as their platform. To the extent
that is done, it will have a very large hand in guaranteeing the success
and longevity of the platform.

I also understand the need to minimize the number of "home grown"
copyrights although Mr. Woods seems so close to the standard BSD one that
perhaps it should be added to the list of 'approved' forms. As long as that
list is managable (say less than 6 variations) the legal burden of vetting
them isn't unreasonable and for the most part the burden of scouring each
of the files to insure they have one of the n forms is something the
release process should take on. 

I strongly reject any notion that there is some "level" of contribution
that determines whether or not one is added to the "authors" list. That
type of thinking belongs in Hollywood, not in a rational technical arena. 

My own opinion of course,
--Chuck