From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Oct 6 16:16:23 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 929B016A420 for ; Thu, 6 Oct 2005 16:16:23 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from kirk@strauser.com) Received: from kanga.honeypot.net (kanga.honeypot.net [208.162.254.122]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2AD4343D45 for ; Thu, 6 Oct 2005 16:16:23 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from kirk@strauser.com) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by kanga.honeypot.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 23F8D222400 for ; Thu, 6 Oct 2005 11:16:22 -0500 (CDT) Received: from kanga.honeypot.net ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (kanga.honeypot.net [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 26125-14 for ; Thu, 6 Oct 2005 11:16:21 -0500 (CDT) Received: from janus.daycos.com (janus.daycos.com [204.26.70.77]) (using TLSv1 with cipher RC4-MD5 (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by kanga.honeypot.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8E56021D29C for ; Thu, 6 Oct 2005 11:16:21 -0500 (CDT) From: Kirk Strauser To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2005 11:16:19 -0500 User-Agent: KMail/1.8.2 References: <058f01c5ca8f$a3ed7730$c901a8c0@workdog> In-Reply-To: <058f01c5ca8f$a3ed7730$c901a8c0@workdog> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200510061116.20222.kirk@strauser.com> X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at honeypot.net Subject: Re: Nessus no longer open source X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 16:16:23 -0000 On Thursday 06 October 2005 11:04, Gayn Winters wrote: > [...] under the GPL the AUTHOR of the code is not bound by the same > restrictions that the users are. I don't think that's completely true. The author has copyright over the work that they themselves wrote, but it's my understanding that outside contributors retain copyright to the portions they wrote unless they explicitly sign control over to the authors. In other words, Nessus would be completely free to remove contributed patches, or re-write them internally, but I don't think they're legally able to close-source any code they didn't write. Much ado was made at one point about some scammer or another offering to "buy" Linux. The general concensus is that this would be legally impossible without the permission of everyone who'd ever submitted a patch, unless those patches were removed. -- Kirk Strauser