Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2000 21:37:18 -0700 From: Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net> To: Jordan Hubbard <jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com> Cc: Bill Fumerola <billf@chimesnet.com>, Mark Ovens <marko@FreeBSD.ORG>, Will Andrews <will@physics.purdue.edu>, advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: stolen script? Message-ID: <20001001213718.N27736@fw.wintelcom.net> In-Reply-To: <55711.970457762@winston.osd.bsdi.com>; from jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com on Sun, Oct 01, 2000 at 08:36:02PM -0700 References: <billf@chimesnet.com> <55711.970457762@winston.osd.bsdi.com>
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* Jordan Hubbard <jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com> [001001 20:36] wrote:
> > On Sun, Oct 01, 2000 at 08:25:44PM -0700, Jordan Hubbard wrote:
> >
> > > I'm afraid that such "blanket coverage" would not be even remotely
> > > legal, according to the Bern convention or otherwise. All files must
> > > bear the appropriate rcopyright text, especially given the fact that
> > > we mix and match copyrights under /usr/src - /usr/src/gnu is obviously
> > > not covered by src/COPYRIGHT for example.
src/COPYRIGHT is pretty clear about what code it covers, if you had
taken the time to read it before responding you would have seen my
initial point.
> >
> > So why do we even have src/COPYRIGHT, then? To copyright itself?
>
> I've always wondered that myself. Go do a grep on all our .c files
> and you'll find that far more of them contain copyright lines than
> don't, so even if it was intended as "a place to point" it certainly
> never fulfilled that purpose. I think it was one of those "seemed
> like a good idea at the time" things.
I think this roll over and play dead stance about the issue is
completely wrong. The BSD license "give credit where credit is
do" is about as free as it can get while still forcing some
attribution back to the authors.
Simply stated (from src/COPYRIGHT):
All of the documentation and software included in the 4.4BSD and 4.4BSD-Lite
Releases is copyrighted by The Regents of the University of California.
Copyright 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
...yadda yadda
The code is imported from 386BSD, you didn't write etc/security
did you? Maybe you don't want to enforce the copyright, but I
don't think it's your place to decide. How willing would you be
to toss out my copyright based on a technicality?
I certainly think people shouldn't be able to take code from our
repo, slap the GPL on it and call it thier own. I also don't think
it's in your best interest to weaken our license, you should know
how these things work, if my code was the next thing to be ripped
and then somehow your position about the situation was cited as a
reason for it being OK, well that would be a pretty upsetting trend
to start.
I'm not trying to advocate someone call in the lawyers here, just
that someone committing such blatent theft gets looked down on and
a polite email sent to remind them of what the right thing to do
is. No lawyers, just some common courtesy.
thanks,
--
-Alfred Perlstein - [bright@wintelcom.net|alfred@freebsd.org]
"I have the heart of a child; I keep it in a jar on my desk."
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