[ECOS] A temporary change of eCos copyright assignments

[Alex Schuilenburg]

As you may be aware, the copyright of the eCos source base is mostly 
owned by Red Hat with portions owned by the individual maintainers. The 
eCos maintainers have also elected that the copyright of future 
significant contributions to eCos should be assigned to the FSF (Free 
Software Foundation) instead of Red Hat. This will help ensure legal 
protection for eCos and its users and well as protecting the future of eCos.

Unfortunately the FSF are currently unable to accept copyright 
assignments for eCos, although they have confirmed their willingness to 
do so, and there has been some dissatisfaction with the current 
arrangements with assigning to Red Hat. The discussions with the FSF 
have been taking longer than anticipated, and there have been a number 
of occasions where assignments have not been handled as promptly as the 
maintainers would have hoped. This has resulted in unnecessary delays to 
the inclusion of eCos contributions in the standard eCos source base and 
CVS tree. As a result, to encourage the efficient processing of 
contributions we, eCosCentric, are prepared to process and administer 
eCos copyright assignments until the FSF are able to fully assume the role.

Unfortunately, eCosCentric may not legally accept eCos copyright 
assignments on behalf of the FSF. Instead, we are willing to accept 
copyright assignments of code and documentation copyright for new 
contributions and have pledged to reassign copyright of that same code 
to the FSF when the FSF begins accepting eCos copyright assignments. It 
is eCosCentric's intention to also assign copyright of our own future 
public contributions to eCos to the FSF.

This email therefore provides a public commitment by eCosCentric to 
reassign to the FSF the copyright of code that has been assigned to 
eCosCentric by eCos contributors under this scheme. eCosCentric promises 
that it will not abuse the copyright assigned to it by relicensing it 
under different terms. All assigned code will only be distributed by 
eCosCentric under the eCos license (or in the case of files contributed 
under a difference license, such as certain BSD licensed files, the 
license which that file declares itself to be under). eCosCentric seeks 
to derive no commercial benefit whatsoever from having these assignments 
made to them.

For additional information, please see this FAQ:
   http://ecos.sourceware.org/ecoscentric-assignment.html

-- Alex Schuilenburg

Managing Director / CEO                           eCosCentric Limited
http://www.ecoscentric.com/              The eCos and RedBoot experts



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