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Re: Who's maintaining CVS


On Tue, Sep 24, 2002 at 10:31:38AM -0400, Tim Drury wrote:
> Jani Monoses wrote:
> >>Jani and Thomas: have you guys already submitted this paperwork
> >>to Redhat?  Jani, if you recall I used your Atmel at49xxxx flash
> > 
> > 
> > I will probably not sign such an assignment,sorry.If anyone is interested
> > I can place all my contributions from now on in the public domain (where 
> > possible) so anyone with signed papers can legally take them and submit them
> > as their own.This goes for the lwIP port too.
> > 
> 
> Jani, is there any way we can convince you otherwise?  I cannot
> send in my copyright assignment in good faith because I submitted
> your at49xxxx flash driver.  If you do not want to turn over
> copyright assignment to Redhat we probably need to pull the
> patch and re-write it from scratch.
> 
> This whole process (including getting my employer to sign their
> waiver) took me 20 minutes.
> 
> I truly don't believe this paperwork is counter to the philosophy
> of open-source development.  Instead, it provides Redhat and the FSF
> with all the legal ammunition they need to pursue anyone that would
> attempt to wrest control of eCos or your flash driver.  I call it
> fighting fire with fire.  I look forward to the day when an open
> source license is defended in court.  To my knowledge no precedent
> has been set (i.e. a case has gone to the jury and all appeals
> exhausted).

Following the FSF directions, it seems perfectly OK to do it in two
steps:

- Jani surrenders any interests in the code with the disclaimer
  that answers the question:  "Would you be willing to sign a 
  copyright disclaimer to put this change in the public domain, 
  so that we can install it in program?" 
  (from http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain_7.html#SEC7)

- anyone else (Tim ?) takes up the code and signs a Copyright
  Assignment to e.g. Redhat if that is a requirement for inclusion
  of the code in the official eCos tree.

> ... but without practices that IMHO are not conforming to the 
> open source and 'community' spirit, 

So, since this procedure is documented on the FSF site, I believe
they are not against the open source 'community' spirit.

You only need to make sure that you have the legal rights to 
give away all your "Copyright interests" in this code.

Peter

> 
> -tim
> 
> 
> -- 
> Before posting, please read the FAQ: http://sources.redhat.com/fom/ecos
> and search the list archive: http://sources.redhat.com/ml/ecos-discuss
> 

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