Re: [ECOS] Who's maintaining CVS

[Peter Vandenabeele <peter dot vandenabeele at mind dot be>]

Sorry if this is off-topic for most developers.

On Tue, Sep 24, 2002 at 06:18:22PM +0000, Jani Monoses wrote:
> > 
> > - Jani surrenders any interests in the code with the disclaimer
> >   that answers the question:  "Would you be willing to sign a 
> >   copyright disclaimer to put this change in the public domain, 
> >   so that we can install it in program?" 
> >   (from http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain_7.html#SEC7)
> > 
> > So, since this procedure is documented on the FSF site, I believe
> > they are not against the open source 'community' spirit.
> 
> Ok you're right I didn't know about this.
> 
> > You only need to make sure that you have the legal rights to 
> > give away all your "Copyright interests" in this code.
> 
> Well this is a right I am sure I don't have because the contributions
> are not written from scratch.That's why I asked in an earlier mail whether
> all BSD network stack authors signed such an assignment?I highly doubt that.
> I think most legal issues arise when the license is GPL but with BSD or
> more lax licenses there should be less fear.

from http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
"
GPL-Compatible, Free Software Licenses
[...]

  The modified BSD license.
    (Note: on the preceding link, the modified BSD license is listed in 
    the "General" section.)

  This is the original BSD license, modified by removal of the advertising clause. 
  It is a simple, permissive non-copyleft free software license, compatible with 
  the GNU GPL.
"  

Modified-BSD is a "GPL-compatible" license. This means that you can "upgrade" 
from modified-BSD to GPL. You can redistribute a work that consists of a 
combination of (new and older) GPL code with modified-BSD code, as long as 
the "whole work" (this is the literal term used in the GPL 2.0), is 
distributed under GPL. 

Later downgrading from GPL back to BSD-style license is not possible
(because modified-BSD is not copy-left).

In my vision, upgrading from modified-BSD to the ECOS 2.0 license (modified GPL)
seems equivalent to the case of upgrading from modified-BSD to GPL. The modifier 
statements in the ECOS 2.0 license do not conflict with the modified-BSD 
statements.

So, if the original work was released with the modified BSD:

- you do _not_ have the right to publish it as "public domain" authored by King Kong
  (since you are required to include in any copy the original copyright statement,
  the "conditions" and the legal disclaimer in any copy as stated clearly in the
  modified BSD license).

- you do _not_ have the right to re-assign the copyright, as requested by
  the eCos policy (modified BSD does not grant you that right, unless the
  authors did grant you that right in a separate writing).

- you do have the right to re-distribute it as a GPL license (and I would presume
  also as ECOS 2.0 license, (since then you will still leave the original 
  Copyright notice, leave in the minimal conditions and leave the disclaimer). 

  What I do myself when making a BSD derived license, it to add the original
  BSD license conditions in a separate section that I call "upstream license
  conditions" and put all BSD stuff (the conditions and the disclaimer) in 
  there. This matches exactly with the requirements of those conditions, which
  are to have a copy of it in all derived works. Modified BSD does not forbid 
  you to place additional, more restricitve conditions, such as the GPL or 
  ECOS 2.0 conditions.

I assume this case actually makes clear why I prefer to use a distributed
Copyright instead of the technique of Copyright Assignment. 

Peter

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