On Tue, 7 Dec 1999, Herb Peyerl wrote:

> I know of at least 2 embedded products using NetBSD that didn't want to 
> publicize what their products were based on.  Not for reasons of 'distrust'
> so much as "it's no ones business what the inside of our product looks 
> like".

How is it that this isn't legally very much our business?  NetBSD deserves
recognition for its use in these products, and I was under the impression
that our license was written to insure that they do quite a bit more than
``officially admit'' to using NetBSD:


/*	$NetBSD: init_main.c,v 1.157 1999/09/28 14:47:03 bouyer Exp $	*/

/*
 * Copyright (c) 1995 Christopher G. Demetriou.  All rights reserved.
 * Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993
 *	The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.
 * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
[...]
 * 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
 *    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
 *    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
 * 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
 *    must display the following acknowledgement:
 *	This product includes software developed by the University of
 *	California, Berkeley and its contributors.
[...]

so, Clause 2, they must credit many, many people in the docs, as our
install documents do at the end.  Clause 3, they must credit at least just
Berkeley (and TNF?) in _all advertising materials_.  How am I
misinterpreting this?

I suspect I must be making some mistake, because to my naive
interpretation this sounds like a blatant violation of a very clear and
well-understood license.  Assuming, hypothetically, that I am not
misinterpreting this, perhaps someone has legal resources at their
disposal to stop these people from stealing our work?

At the very least, I think those that know where NetBSD is being used
illegally ought to speak up, and the information should be posted publicly
on the site, along with notice that they are violating the license.  If
you want to put it off for a month to contact the vendor, fine, but I
really do not like the way this smells.  

Of course, like I said, it's probably all some sort of underhanded
donkeyfaced misunderstanding.  Still, this looks to me not like yet
another random sucky thing that happened to us, but rather like something
the project already anticipated, decided about, and took precautions to
prevent--and now we're just whimping out about it.  What's more, it's not
entirely our call--Berkeley is a victim here, too.  Can we ethically
support a vendor when we know for a fact that they are violating their
license with Berkeley?  This seems shady, to say the least, and may even
put NetBSD folk who work with these vendors at risk.  Why is this
tolerable?

-- 
Miles Nordin / v:1-888-857-2723 fax:+1 530 579-8680
555 Bryant Street PMB 182 / Palo Alto, CA 94301-1700 / US