Re: [ECOS] Who's maintaining CVS

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

[...]
> Red Hat won't do anything like this because they are a business entirely 
> centred on Open Source and could never have any credibility if something 
> like that happened. Any other random business might though.

This is a dangerous assumption. The system should not be dependent on the 
mere goodwill of the current Copyright holder. The Copyright to eCos could 
at any time, by a voluntary of unvoluntary transfer or trade sale end up 
in the hands of such an "other random business" e.g. a major provider of 
closed source embedded OS's. In my current understanding of the eCos 
Copyright Assignment text, they would have the perfect right to take the 
code, adapt it here and there, and include it in their proprietary products.
At that time it is the license definition and the exact wording of the 
content of the Copyright Assignment contracts that should protect any 
contributor from its work being used in a method he may dislike.

I have a few questions on the current Copyright Assignment contract:

-  The introductory text of the  Copyright assignment form 
   (http://sources.redhat.com/ecos/assign.html) states that "your specific 
   contribution stays free to _all_". But, it is not clear (to me) if later 
   improved versions to that contribution also stay free to _all_ , or even to 
   the contributor himself.
   
-  The exact wording of the official "eCos assignment" text to be signed is
   different (and less favorable, since it only grants rights to _me_):

   "Upon thirty days prior written notice, Red Hat agrees to grant _me_
    non-exclusive rights to use the Work (i.e. just my changes and enhancements,
    not eCos as a whole) as I see fit; (and Red Hat's rights shall otherwise
    continue unchanged)."

Below I make an initial suggestion for a addition to the text for paragraph 2 that 
would clarify this and gives stronger rights to the authors that Assign Copyright. 

   "Upon thirty days prior written notice, Red Hat agrees to grant _me_ 
    non-exclusive rights to use the original Work, as it was contributed (i.e. 
    just my changes and enhancements, not eCos as a whole) as I see fit; (and Red 
    Hat's rights shall otherwise continue unchanged). Red Hat also agrees to grant 
    _any interested party_ non-exclusive rights to use the Work and its later, 
    modified, improved or extended versions under the ECOS 2.0 license. This
    availability to _any interest party_ shall be guaranteed by making available
    at minimal cost, to _any interested party_ under the ECOS 2.0 license, the
    source code of these later, modified, improved or extended versions. This 
    condition of availability is to be fulfilled by Red Hat or any new Copyright 
    holder to which the Copyright of the Work would be transfered at a later 
    stage. If Red Hat or the a new Copyright holder do not obey this condition of 
    source code availability under the ECOS 2.0 license, the consequence is that 
    this contract is void and the Copyright returns to the original Copyright 
    holder in this contact."

Peter

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