From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat Oct 19 16:36:48 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id QAA19780 for hackers-outgoing; Sat, 19 Oct 1996 16:36:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id QAA19769; Sat, 19 Oct 1996 16:36:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id QAA03113; Sat, 19 Oct 1996 16:34:46 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199610192334.QAA03113@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/lib/libc/db/hash hash_buf.c To: karl@Mcs.Net (Karl Denninger) Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 16:34:46 -0700 (MST) Cc: deraadt@theos.com, dyson@FreeBSD.org, misc@openbsd.org, hackers@FreeBSD.org In-Reply-To: <199610191640.LAA03279@Jupiter.Mcs.Net> from "Karl Denninger" at Oct 19, 96 11:40:56 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > > Thank you. But I will not help FreeBSD with security problems unless > > something drastic happens. > > Consider any commit that I place on FreeBSD from here on out to be > Copyrighted by me and forbidden to show up in your codebase. And yes, I > will put legal notice on them if I have to. > > I strongly suggest other developers to do the same with their commits. This is horribly bad precedent. I strongly encourage all developers in all camps to *not* do this. One would also hope that the people controlling the source tree in *any* BSD camp would refuse to commit any code having such restrictions as coming with too high a price tag. The point of the UCB-style license is "raise the bar" for everyone by establishing a higher baseline for future work. The point of the GPL is to implement a social construct using source code to "pay" people to buy into the construct. It establishes a higher baseline only for work which is done in the context of the social construct. Code carrying the proposed restriction would be *worse* than GPL when measured against the goal of "raising the bar", since it would have much smaller utility than even the GPL code by virtue of the restrictions on the eventual use of the code. GPL, at least, allows anyone to *utilize* the code without restriction, even if they can't *use* it without restriction. Attaching *any* rider to the UCB-style licensed source code voids the value it is intended to have. Such code should *not*, as a matter of policy, find it's way into the source trees of any of the BSD camps. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.