Re: [ECOS] Who's maintaining CVS

[Peter Vandenabeele <peter dot vandenabeele at mind dot be>]

On Tue, Sep 24, 2002 at 07:11:35PM +0000, Jani Monoses wrote:
> > 
> > So, if the original work was released with the modified BSD:
> > 
> > - you do _not_ have the right to publish it as "public domain" authored by King Kong
> >   (since you are required to include in any copy the original copyright statement,
> >   the "conditions" and the legal disclaimer in any copy as stated clearly in the
> >   modified BSD license).
> 
> Of course,I was rather talking about a situation where the code is written from scratch
> and even then because of the assignment policy could not be incorporated because King
> Kong is illiterate and cannot sign.

If it is "public domain", then there is no Copyright, so no one needs to sign anything, 
not even King Kong.

> He would use emacs though :)

:-)  (or vi ?).

> So the reason even stronger than my not liking the assignment stuff is that as you put
> it I cannot sign for something not entirely my own.I never said I would downgrade BSD 
> licensed software into public domain :)

I know, and this was not meant personally against you. I just wanted to tell about how I see
the matter.

> Too bad there is no definite and detailed statement from Red Hat that could clear things up
> and let us talk about technical issues rather than legal ones on ecos discuss.

I believe the situation is very clear (but not necessarily optimal):

- Red Hat requests Copyright Assigment for all work published on the official Red Hat servers
    [that is the perfect right of Red Hat, to set conditions for putting any work 
     on their servers]
    
- Red Hat distributes all work on that server (that is Copyright Red Hat) with the ECOS 2.0 
  license
    [this is very nice from Red Hat]
    
- this license gives you the rights to copy, distribute, modify (and use) the code, 
  if you respect the copy-left principle in such distribution, and where the copy-left
  principle is limited to the work itself and excluding the works that are combined with 
  it to form the "whole" (this exclusion is the difference with GPL 2.0)
    [this is very nice form Red Hat]
    
- nobody forbids anyone to set-up their own servers and add other code to it, that is
  not Copyright Red Hat, as long as you abide to the ECOS 2.0 license (including the 
  copy-left mechanisms in it).
    [this is out of the control of Red Hat]
  
- nobody forbids you to publish your own patch on your own ftp server, with any license that
  is compliant with the original modified-BSD under which you received it (e.g. the ECOS 2.0 
  license) and if you are sure you have the rights to publish your own modifications. People 
  can still build there own version making a combination of the standard version on the 
  Redhat site and your additions. But, this is not an optimal method to perform 'community'
  development.
    [this is out of the control of Red Hat]

Anyway, we might better stop this thread and go back to work ...

Peter

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