Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2000 02:10:38 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com (Jordan Hubbard) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert), bright@wintelcom.net (Alfred Perlstein), marko@FreeBSD.ORG (Mark Ovens), will@physics.purdue.edu (Will Andrews), advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: stolen script? Message-ID: <200010030210.TAA00915@usr06.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <72330.970526215@winston.osd.bsdi.com> from "Jordan Hubbard" at Oct 02, 2000 03:36:55 PM
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> > According to the IBM lawyers who did due dilligence on all > > of FreeBSD, prior to the Whistle acquisition, the src/COPYRIGHT > > is all that's necessary and sufficient. > > [I should know better than to reply to a Lambert posting, but > what the hell, it's Monday :) ] > > I would have thought IBM employed more expensive lawyers than this. > There are portions of /usr/src clearly covered under the GPL, yet your > lawyers claimed that src/COPYRIGHT still covered them? I have to > believe that you're misrepresenting what they said since I can't > imagine IBM going this far wrong. They didn't care about the stuff that didn't infringe intellectual property, and was merely tactical. Samba, for instance, was permitted. What they cared about most was patent infringing GPL'ed code, followed closely by files with no statements in them whatsoever, with the "Beerware" license coming in third. IBM also ran down every non-explicitly licensed file with the author, and insisted that it either be vetted or removed. Be aware that an InterJet runs FreeBSD, but it runs a purpose built version of FreeBSD, full of things like Telenetworks drivers, a modified General BIOS, and other licensed pieces from third parties. This is not the same as "all FreeBSD", so I did misspeak there; sorry about any confusion. The point is, that anything of unacceptable provenance needed vetting, licensing, or diking. Period. > Similarly, there are other bits of src/ which are covered under the > beerware license, private licenses, various permutations on the > berkeley license and any number of things not covered by > src/COPYRIGHT. That would imply a rule of "under src/COPYRIGHT unless > I say otherwise" and that's not a rule which I could see any lawyer > supporting since it would mean that any portion of src which was taken > away would suddenly be license-less, and expecting an "all or nothing" > approach to FreeBSD's /usr/src would be unrealistic at best. I already addressed the "Beerware" issue in the post to which you are reply, but since that part got snipped, I've readdressed it, above. The private licenses weren't really an issue, so long as they were proforma on IBM's "approved license list", i.e. they did not require source code distribution, or if the products themselves were on IBM's "approved non IBM patent infringing software list", i.e. the code had previously been vetted by another group within IBM. PS: If you take a portion of the source away without a license, then it is, in fact licenseless. You lose any rights that were granted you by the license. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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