This is the mail archive of the ecos-maintainers@sources.redhat.com mailing list for the eCos project.


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]
Other format: [Raw text]

Re: some kind of week...


Gary Thomas wrote:
It seems that I've done it again :-(  Not our of any intent,
I've offended the eCos world (or at least part of it).

If my note to ecos-patches had never used the word "logo",
none of this would have ever been an issue.  Honestly, I was
just following prior practice when adding this "logo" to
the RedBoot for the port I am working on (_for_ Mind).  It
has been done many times before, always to accolades.  Now,
in these changed times, it creates controversy.

Don't worry about it IHMO. I think everyone's been perceiving more intent than there has actually been :-). I don't think it matters that much that these things happen (and will probably continue to do so to some extent!)... what matters is that the maintainers can take any commercial hat off and Do The Right Thing. With that happening, everything can be resolved amicably (even if opinions differ!).


It's early days, and just like a toddler occasionally we'll be pushing the limits to see how far they should go :-).

Perhaps we should insist that the eCos *public* repository
become and remain vendor neutral.  We could go and find
the places where there is any hint of commercial involvement
and clean this out.  I truly don't have a problem with that.

As stated elsewhere less publically, I think attribution is okay in certain cirumstances, but yes as a general rule we should clean out commercial involvement.


Of course, I'd want to start with this one:
RedBoot(tm) bootstrap and debug environment [RAM]
Non-certified release, version UNKNOWN - built 17:41:25, Feb 25 2003
Platform: NMI uEngine uE250 (XScale PXA250) Copyright (C) 2000, 2001, 2002, Red Hat, Inc.
Please unruffle your feathers and let's decide how this should
be handled, with civility.

Hah! Interestingly I just mentioned this last night on eCosCentric lists before bringing it up publically, in particular since I noticed changing the package version string to 2_0b1 made RedBoot report that it was a Red Hat certified release!


My opinion is that the (C) msesage should just be dropped, particularly if we did eventually did go the "no copyright assignment" approach. Although maybe we have to be mindful of the GPL 2(c):

    c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively
    when run, you must cause it, when started running for such
    interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an
    announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a
    notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide
    a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under
    these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this
    License.  (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but
    does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on
    the Program is not required to print an announcement.)

I would like to hope that "not normally print an announcement" means that removing the existing Copyright message will make RedBoot compliant.

It's probably not such an issue for host tools where the size of scrollbar on a Help->About doesn't make much difference, although it would be a bit of a pain to always add more names every time someone contributed something. Hmm.

I don't think we should resolve this for the beta as we're a bit too close now, but along with other licence issues, this will need resolving for 2.0 final.

Jifl
--
eCosCentric    http://www.eCosCentric.com/    The eCos and RedBoot experts
--[ "You can complain because roses have thorns, or you ]--
--[  can rejoice because thorns have roses." -Lincoln   ]-- Opinions==mine


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]