Re: That dwarf2read patch i just submitted

[Kevin Buettner <kevinb at cygnus dot com>]

On Oct 23,  4:38pm, Daniel Berlin wrote:

> Sigh.
> I'll redo the work then.
> Is there any way i can give him credit, without having to get a
> copyright assignment from him?

In this case, you should first check to see if he has a copyright
assignment on file.  If he does, there's no problem.

If he doesn't, contact him and find out if he's willing to provide
one.  This can be the hard part because, although he may be perfectly
willing, his employer might not be.  (The employer also has to sign a
copyright disclaimer.) There's an added difficulty if he's changed
employer's since writing the patch.  (A former employer may be even
more unwilling than normal to sign a copyright disclaimer for work
done by an ex-employee.)

I know from first hand experience that it can be difficult to get the
employer to sign the copyright disclaimer.  Some are perfectly
willing, but their legal departments decide to hold things up.

Anyway... if you have trouble getting a disclaimer from either
the individual in question or their employer, I suppose that you
could try rewriting the patch yourself.  But it is probably better
describe in English (without using code) what needs to be done
to this file and get someone else who hasn't seen the patch to
do it.  I suppose you could then provide credit by saying something
like "Inspired by (but not based on) the work of ...".

Or, if you had an obviously different implementation, that too
would likely suffice.

If you do decide to reimplement Brian's patch, you should seek Andrew
Cagney's opinion first in order to make sure that your approach is
acceptable to the FSF.

Kevin