Re: [ECOS] Who's maintaining CVS

[Jonathan Larmour <jifl at eCosCentric dot com>]

Peter Vandenabeele wrote:
> [...]
>
>> Red Hat won't do anything like this because they are a business
>> entirely centred on Open Source and could never have any credibility
>> if something like that happened. Any other random business might
>> though.
>
>
> This is a dangerous assumption. The system should not be dependent on
> the mere goodwill of the current Copyright holder. The Copyright to
> eCos could at any time, by a voluntary of unvoluntary transfer or trade
> sale end up in the hands of such an "other random business" e.g. a
> major provider of closed source embedded OS's.

But they cannot change the licence of code that's already out there. e.g.
you can still get the version of eCos under the previous licence (RHEPL)
if you want (it's in CVS).

> In my current understanding of the eCos Copyright Assignment text, they
> would have the perfect right to take the code, adapt it here and there,
> and include it in their proprietary products.

Absolutely. People should be clear that this can happen. In fact, the
ability to include it in proprietary products is something important for
eCos as it makes it acceptable to commercial organisations, which
encourages uptake. The embedded world is far more driven by commercial
organisations than many other spheres of open source development.
(Obviously there are exceptions).

Red Hat already did that. And the result was that there were many
customers who then either contributed things back themselves, or paid for
us to write useful stuff we could then release to the world. eCos would
not be where it is without that!

> At that time it is the license definition and the exact wording of the
>  content of the Copyright Assignment contracts that should protect any
>  contributor from its work being used in a method he may dislike.

Well, we're now free of Red Hat, and we might look at other options for 
the assignment designee. But the maintainers believe that working with the 
commercial world, not despite it, is the correct way to go. What we would 
like to ensure for the future is that things like licence variation can 
only happen when it is for the good of eCos.

> I have a few questions on the current Copyright Assignment contract:
>
> -  The introductory text of the  Copyright assignment form
> (http://sources.redhat.com/ecos/assign.html) states that "your specific
>  contribution stays free to _all_". But, it is not clear (to me) if
> later improved versions to that contribution also stay free to _all_ ,
> or even to the contributor himself.

What matters is that you have a right to use that version because of the 
GPL. If a closed source company came along and "took away" eCos, we'd 
still have all the code as it stands now and there's nothing they could do 
about that.

> -  The exact wording of the official "eCos assignment" text to be
> signed is different (and less favorable, since it only grants rights to
> _me_):
>
> "Upon thirty days prior written notice, Red Hat agrees to grant _me_
> non-exclusive rights to use the Work (i.e. just my changes and
> enhancements, not eCos as a whole) as I see fit; (and Red Hat's rights
> shall otherwise continue unchanged)."
>
> Below I make an initial suggestion for a addition to the text for
> paragraph 2 that would clarify this and gives stronger rights to the
> authors that Assign Copyright.
>
> "Upon thirty days prior written notice, Red Hat agrees to grant _me_
> non-exclusive rights to use the original Work, as it was contributed
> (i.e. just my changes and enhancements, not eCos as a whole) as I see
> fit; (and Red Hat's rights shall otherwise continue unchanged). Red Hat
> also agrees to grant _any interested party_ non-exclusive rights to use
> the Work and its later, modified, improved or extended versions under
> the ECOS 2.0 license. This availability to _any interest party_ shall
> be guaranteed by making available at minimal cost, to _any interested
> party_ under the ECOS 2.0 license, the source code of these later,
> modified, improved or extended versions. This condition of availability
> is to be fulfilled by Red Hat or any new Copyright holder to which the
> Copyright of the Work would be transfered at a later stage. If Red Hat
> or the a new Copyright holder do not obey this condition of source code
> availability under the ECOS 2.0 license, the consequence is that this
> contract is void and the Copyright returns to the original Copyright
> holder in this contact."

I won't poke legal holes in this even though I could, but I'll give you 
one little insight into Red Hat: it won't fly. It's difficult enough to 
get _much_ less significant legal tweaks negotiated with them, even when 
we were employees! Even though I can change the licence text on the web 
page, I can't change it in practice, because it is essentially a contract 
which we expect Red Hat to sign. If we change it, they won't sign.

Just to be clear: no maintainer has any direct influence on Red Hat any 
longer - we are not employed by them. If we ask them if this would be 
acceptable, they can say no just because they can, but more likely we'd 
just never get a response from them at all now. Been there, done that. As 
I said, we're evaluating other options for assignments.

Jifl
--
--[ "You can complain because roses have thorns, or you ]--
--[  can rejoice because thorns have roses." -Lincoln   ]-- Opinions==mine


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