[ On Monday, March 8, 1999 at 14:39:45 (-0800), Ross Harvey wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: Last chance: Copyrights is OK ?
>
> We have apparently considered requiring a NetBSD Foundation copyright
> assignment for new work not imported from other projects.  Using a plain
> Berkeley license is a step down from the ideal.  Using a modified, problematic
> Berkeley license is two steps down.

Well, let's put it this way.  There's zero chance I'll ever assign the
copyright to anyone else (except maybe my own corporation -- which I
might still do, but I don't yet know the legal implications of doing
that).  The current copyright license gives almost free reign with my
code, so TNF can do with it as they please within the existing terms.

Like I said if the TNF's lawyers say that it would be highly desireable
to use the exact terms of the TNF/UCB license then I may concede, but no
kernel hacker is any more knowledgeable about copyright issues than I
am, especially not of those issue specific to a Canadian author, so
without further correspondence from those lawyers I'm not changing
anything.

If TNF is seriously thinking of *requiring* all new work to be assigned
to themselves then they're only cutting off the hands that feed them.
That's at least as bad, if not worse, than the FSF requesting
assignment.  At least with the FSF I'm guaranteed the goals are for
*free* software and perhaps I can justify to myself that they are the
greater cause.  That's not something I'm anywhere near comfortable with
TNF.  I'm about as close as I've ever been to changing all my copyrights
to use GPL terms as it is -- you probably don't want to encourage me
further.

> I have to wonder, though, is this a tech-kern issue? Isn't something like
> this a core@netbsd.org issue?

It might be, but I'm not a subscriber to that list, so it's kinda hard
to discuss it openly there....  I suppose we could open the flood gates
and discuss this issue in current-users!  ;-)

Eric started a project for getting hardware management support into
NetBSD.  I'd already written a very complete LM78/LM79 driver and had
already placed it under copyright terms I hoped would be acceptable to
TNF so I sent him a copy to get things rolling.  I asked Eric to make
sure those terms were indeed acceptable to TNF and said that if he met
any resistance that I would be open to specific suggestions for changes
in wording so long as my intentions were met.  We're in the middle of
that process now.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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