[ On Monday, September 13, 1999 at 10:49:48 (+0900), itojun@iijlab.net wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: what happened to the lm75(?) driver? 
>
> 	Attached is a text related to this issue, which I wish to place
> 	onto http://www.netbsd.org/developers/foo.html.  Hope this helps.
> 	My take is that, advertising clause do not help both parties
> 	(third party and developers themselves), this comes with too high cost.

Which advertising clause?!?!?!

My copyright includes two very different clauses that control how my
name may be used.  One forces "users" of my copyright to retain my name
in the relevant files and to include it in a master list of contributors
and the other prevents them from (ab)using my name in promotional,
i.e. advertising, material.

> 	Though I've got some comment on it the text needs more improvement.
> 	I need your comments and suggetsions.
> 	Please move to some other mailing list, if we need to continue this
> 	discussion.  This apparently is not an tech-kern issue.

I don't know of any other *public* list where this topic is encouraged
or I would have forwarded my initial message there.  Perhaps we need a
"netbsd-politics" or similar list.  In lieu of having such a list that's
already subscribed to by all those interested in such issues I'd prefer
to keep this in at least the venue where the question was raised.

[[ on to what seems to be the meat of the issue: ]]

> To clarify the project encourages developers to assign copyrights to
> TNF, but accepts code from developers that wish to retain their
> copyright, as long as that the copyright notice does not have
> an advertising clause (the "3rd clause"). TNF is working towards
> eliminating the advertising clause on all non-TNF copyrighted code.

Hmmmm....  sounds a lot hypocritical to me.  TNF must protect its name
but doesn't want anyone else to protect theirs.

TNF *is* using this as a lever to convince/force contributors to assign
their copyrights to TNF.  This is wrong.

> The rationale for this decision is that the advertising clause puts
> a very big burden to third party distributors who have to make sure
> that all copyright lists are complete and include 100's of lines
> of copyright attributions with their distributions.

It's not a large burden *at* *all*, and certianly not un-called for.
Rights are rights.  Either you protect them, or you lose them.

Any third party developer that feels this is a large burden really needs
to have their legal position re-evaluated by a more competent advisor.

This is, after all, what it (i.e. free software development) is all
about!  If I were getting paid in full for this code then the person
paying me would likely have the right to demand ownership of the code
(assuming I didn't negotiate a less standard form of employment) and to
do whatever they please with the code I wrote after the fact.

Third party distributors who wish to use my code *must* pay for it by
honouring my copyright.  IMNSHO it is a *very* *small* price for them to
pay and it is by definition their job to "pay" it.  If they would rather
not pay this meager price then they are free to find some other
equivalent replacement code.

I will not give up these rights for free and I will not support TNF in
any effort to convince its other contributors to do likewise.

> In addition, when the advertising clause gets violated, it has been
> up to the copyright holders to protect their copyrights. In all
> cases so far - except from the occasional e-mail flamewar - there
> has been no legal followup.  It is also very costly if each developer
> has to check each distribution for proper attributions.

Indeed.  This is where I think TNF does have a place.  Unfortunately
filling that position requires funding.

Personally I'm not too worried about tracking down every third-party
distribution of NetBSD and checking to see if my copyright has been
honoured.  Without everyone having Bill Gates' legal budget we can all
only hope to keep the honest folks honest and hope the crooks are scared
off by our numbers because they're likely to blow us all away at once
and not just try to foil one individual developer at a time.

> If you would like to remain as copyright holder:
> 
> /*
>  * Copyright (c) YEAR John Doe.
>  * All rights reserved.
>  *
>  * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
>  * modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
>  * are met:
>  * 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
>  *    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
>  * 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. Neither the name of the author(s) nor the names of its
>  *    contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived
>  *    from this software without specific prior written permission.

Now I'm confused.  I thought this (#3) was the "advertising clause" that
TNF wanted to eliminate on individual developer copyrights yet here it
is in black and white (at least on my monitor! ;-).

Now read very closely my two related terms and keep in mind that I'm
assuming every distribution, binary or not, will contain *or* be
accompanied by, a list of attributions, and that TNF will itself take on
the effort and responsibility of creating a canonical master file
including all of such acknowledgments to individual contributors (thus
relieving the third-party vendors from having to do this separately):

 * 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 Greg A. Woods.
 *
 * 4. The name of the author may NOT be used to endorse or promote
 * products derived from this software without specific prior written
 * permission.  The use of the author's name strictly to meet the
 * requirements of the previous terms is not to be considered promotion
 * or endorsement under this term.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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