[ntp:hackers] Copyright notices

Poul-Henning Kamp phk at phk.freebsd.dk
Thu Feb 9 20:26:25 UTC 2006


In message <43EBA44D.4090404 at sun.com>, Brian Utterback writes:

>IP ownership
>is becoming a major issue these days and is likely only increase in
>importance.

IP ownership is only going to be an issue if you let people make it
one.

With the current hodge-podge of IP ownership in NTPD people will have
to get to grasps with the fact that there is, in the end, nobody
they can sue.

Everytime somebody like Oracle, IBM or SCO calls for unification and
cleanup of licensing, it is to make it a more practical legal target,
should they ever need it.

Remember the legacy of the 90ies: Blame-allocation.  It's doesn't
matter if it works or not, it doesn't matter if it's legal or not,
as long as you are sure you can pass the blame to somebody else.

That is the game Oracles lawyers are engaged in right now.  They're
in effect telling us to shape up so we make a better legal target.

>The only thing that we can do is decide what license to use, and
>then contact those copyright holders that you can and get permission
>to use the new license, and ripe out anything that you cannot get
>permission for. And make sure the project has the rights to modify
>the license for all further contributions so that this doesn't
>happen again.

And just _what_ is the benefit to the project of doing this ?

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.


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