Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 01:41:59 +0300 From: Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> To: cjclark@alum.mit.edu Cc: Nate Williams <nate@yogotech.com>, "Thomas T. Veldhouse" <veldy@veldy.net>, Andrew Kenneth Milton <akm@theinternet.com.au>, Brian Somers <brian@Awfulhak.org>, freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG, brian@freebsd-services.com Subject: Re: Copyright Contradiction in libalias Message-ID: <20010823014158.B4824@hades.hell.gr> In-Reply-To: <20010821162913.B313@blossom.cjclark.org>; from cristjc@earthlink.net on Tue, Aug 21, 2001 at 04:29:13PM -0700 References: <cristjc@earthlink.net> <200108202249.f7KMnjU93566@hak.lan.Awfulhak.org> <20010821091441.F21855@zeus.theinternet.com.au> <006e01c12a43$48f9cb30$3028680a@tgt.com> <20010821114020.T313@blossom.cjclark.org> <20010821231841.B96292@hades.hell.gr> <20010821153116.Z313@blossom.cjclark.org> <15234.58543.854779.892964@nomad.yogotech.com> <20010821162913.B313@blossom.cjclark.org>
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From: Crist J. Clark <cristjc@earthlink.net> Subject: Re: Copyright Contradiction in libalias Date: Tue, Aug 21, 2001 at 04:29:13PM -0700 > On Tue, Aug 21, 2001 at 04:46:07PM -0600, Nate Williams wrote: > > > However, I can't retroactively take away the rights of anyone who has > > gotten my 'public domain' software. > > You can't do anything. You have no more rights to the software than > anyone else does (except the ability to say you wrote it). Even that (the ability to say you wrote it) might be difficult under certain circumstances. For instance, assuming that you release something to the public domain, and you suspect that someone's brand new and shining binary release of something that behaves like your own code is based on it, there is no clear way of determining whether the claim 'it was me who originally wrote this' is true or false. The recent thread about networking code in Windows and BSD implementation of the IP family of protocols is a good example of such a case :) > > Back to the original question, Charles Mott is the original author of > > said code, and he can release his software under any license he so > > pleases. > > So can FreeBSD with or without his consent since it is public domain > software. Yep. True. The only problem is that if Charles Mott makes changes at a later date to his codebase, changes cannot be merged to the FreeBSD version without permission from him, even if the patches apply cleanly and break nothing that FreeBSD uses. Any future changes that Charles Mott makes to versions that are not explicitly declared by him to be public domain software, have to be rewritten from scratch by FreeBSD folk. -giorgos To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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