Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer

> Greetings and Machinations!
>      What sort of "procedure" (legalese-wise) should I
> follow for porting *licensed* third party software?
> I.e. I own a source license to the software in question
> and *imagined* my "port" (package?) would just
> consist of a set of patches/files against those sources.
> I.e. if you don't have a source license, the files/patches
> are useless to you.
>      But, it occurs to me that this may be treading on
> thin ice w.r.t. the actual terms of the license.  I.e.
> does my publication of *context* diffs constitute
> publishing some portion of the sources?  

Your source license could say anything -- it's a contract between you
and someone who might have some rights to the software in question.
It could say something about whether or not you have the right to
modify or redistribute modifications.

From a *copyright* perspective, IANAL but I'd argue that small amounts
of context would count as fair use -- proposed changes to code are
"criticism" of a sort.  So typical patches would be ok while a diff vs
/dev/null wouldn't be..

> Likewise, if I create a file (an original work) needed to glue parts
> of the program to the NBSD environment, does the publication of that
> *interface* in itself constitute a violation of the license?

Again, it depends on the license....


						- Bill