Greetings and Procreations!

From: Bill Sommerfeld <sommerfeld@orchard.arlington.ma.us>

Ha!  Ahhhlington.  I used to live on Mass Ave just into town.  Seem to
recall
a small theatre on the left side of the street (heading away from cambridge)
nearby...

And a nice ma&pa hardware store further into town
(again on the left hand side).  The sort of place that
still sold bulk hardware in barrels spread around
a dusty wooden floor...

The other thing I remember is it was a *dry* town!  :>


>Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer


OK.  Hold on while I put the dobermans back in their kennels...

>>      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.


I *know* I can't redistribute the source -- modified or not.
My question lies in redistributing *diffs* against that source.
In the extreme case, I imagine I can distribute diffs that
contain no *context* of the original source against which
they are applied...

>From a *copyright* perspective, IANAL but I'd argue that small amounts
>of context would count as fair use -- proposed changes to code are

Ah.  That's an interesting concept...

>"criticism" of a sort.  So typical patches would be ok while a diff vs
>/dev/null wouldn't be..


Of course.

>> 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....


Yes.  (sigh)

Well, it may be a moot point, here.  I think I will probably
do the port under FreeBSD.  Easier for me to get lots of
MIPS for development on an x86 box :-( than any of the
SPARCs I have accumulated (I suspect the LX is the fastest
one I have...).  And, I have considerably more experience
working under FBSD than my 7 year (?) hiatus from NBSD...

:-(

But, thanks for the thoughts!  I suspect I will ulitmately
have to either "hide" the port or "donate" it to the
vendor in the hopes that he will incorporate it in his next
(commercial) offering.  Grrrrr...

Thx,
--don