From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Jan 29 18:04:55 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id SAA13731 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 29 Jan 1998 18:04:55 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from awfulhak.org (awfulhak.demon.co.uk [158.152.17.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id SAA13686 for ; Thu, 29 Jan 1998 18:04:38 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from brian@Awfulhak.org) Received: from gate.lan.awfulhak.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by awfulhak.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id CAA26796; Fri, 30 Jan 1998 02:03:07 GMT (envelope-from brian@gate.lan.awfulhak.org) Message-Id: <199801300203.CAA26796@awfulhak.org> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.1 12/23/97 To: dmaddox@scsn.net cc: Greg Lehey , hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: The BSD License In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 29 Jan 1998 20:20:19 EST." <19980129202019.32143@scsn.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 02:03:06 +0000 From: Brian Somers Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG X-To-Unsubscribe: mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org "unsubscribe hackers" [.....] > Ok, at this point, I think I have asked the wrong question. It seems > to me that the important question wrt STAC is 'What are licensing terms > acceptable to the FreeBSD core team for software included in the base > distribution?', not 'What is the meaning and intent of the BSD license?'. > > Core team members are cordially invited to address this issue, if you > will... I'm not sure that this is the correct question either. The rfc seems to indicate to me that they are not willing to give their software away without at least an NDA. That in itself is not a problem if they're willing to tell us (or me) how to implement the algorithm (and don't place any restrictions on that knowledge). If they were willing to do this, I would have thought it would already be explained in the rfc. Unfortunately it isn't. We need to ask them if they will give us enough knowledge to implement STAC compression *without* an NDA, without any licensing requirements and so that the resulting code can be distributed with FreeBSD for the world to see and use without restriction on that usage. This `knowledge' may be in source code form already or it may be a spec.... Feel free to give 'em my name, although I'm no expert on copyrights. -- Brian , , Don't _EVER_ lose your sense of humour....