[ntp:hackers] Cool new stuff

Todd Glassey tglassey at earthlink.net
Mon Jul 24 15:28:50 UTC 2006



-----Original Message-----
>From: Kurt Roeckx <kurt at roeckx.be>
>Sent: Jul 23, 2006 12:01 PM
>To: Paul Vixie <paul at vix.com>
>Cc: hackers at ntp.org, "David L. Mills" <mills at udel.edu>
>Subject: Re: [ntp:hackers] Cool new stuff
>
>Let's start by saying that I'm not a lawyer, this is not legal
>advice.  If you want that, I suggest you talk to one.
>
>On Sun, Jul 23, 2006 at 04:47:27PM +0000, Paul Vixie wrote:
>> 
>> i will stop discussing it, except to note that only the owner of property can
>> license its use to others.
>
>I believe that would be the "copyright holder".
>
>> if you wanted isc's code to be available as part
>> of NTP under a different license then isc would gift you a copy of the code
>> without any license and then you could put on it whatever license you wanted.
>
>This is a little confusing.  You can basicly do a few things:
>- ISC, as copyright holder, could put it under a different
>  license.
>- ISC could transfer the copyright, and then he can put
>  any license on it that he wants.

Actually NO - the ISC's code cannot be relicensed especially for NTP without terminating the other use licenses as the code could easily be extracted from the NTP source as a derivative and then its totally uncontrolled. The NTP copyrights providing no real control on products or IP that were not licensed as part of the original submission and Paul this was a REALL STUPID idea but it does show how little you know about IP law... wize-guy...

>
>> however, i now see that you're merely confused about the legalities of
>> intellectual property and the ownership and licensing thereof, and i now
>> suspect that our entire disagreement on this matter is due to that confusion.
>
>Please don't use the term "intellectual property".  This causes
>more confusion that needed.  This covers lots of things that have
>don't have much to do with each other like copyright,
>patents and trademarks.

No in this case we are NOT just talking about republication rights, but use rights and those spread much farther than copyright's which allow physical reprinting or publication in full or derivative forms only. This is about the Use Rights to the Code Body itself and the Underlying Algs.

>
>But I do agree that there is alot of confusion about it.

yeah - and this also is amazing - why Technical People are confused about the difference between End-Use Rights for the IP contained and reprinting-only rights in re the publication of the IP in print form only... Copyright is for Rprinting of the material in the described forms, the EULA is the license agreement against the codebase itself as the NTP program.


>
>> > You will note the copyright page says nogthing about licensing, only
>> > copyright.
>> 
>> a copyright is a license.  a license about copying, under certain conditions.
>
>It has 2 parts:
> * Copyright (c) David L. Mills 1992-2006
>
>This is the copyright statement.  It says who's the copyright holder.
>There are actually other people mentioned in the same file, they
>also own part of the copyright.
>
>Then there is:
>* Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and   *
>* its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby         *
>* granted, provided that the above copyright notice appears in all    *
>* copies and that both the copyright notice and this permission       *
>* notice appear in supporting documentation, and that the name        *
>* University of Delaware not be used in advertising or publicity      *
>* pertaining to distribution of the software without specific,        *
>* written prior permission. The University of Delaware makes no       *
>* representations about the suitability this software for any         *
>* purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied          *
>* warranty.                                                    
>
>That is a license.  This license grants me certain rights
>like the right to use, copy, modify and distribute, as
>long as I comply with the rest of the license.

Against the code as supplied by the UDEL - not this group. What is the issue with this - is this really that complex that the wizards here are dumfounded by the idea that the ISC's code is not Dave Mill's Code?

You crack me up...


>
>Copyright and license are not the same thing, it's just
>that they ussually follow each other in case of free/open
>software.
>
>> > How about the IBM lawyer? How about the embedded products like my Xerox
>> > printer and Symmetricom GPS servers? If none of these guys has any problem,
>> > then I and UDel don't either.
>> 
>> ok, then once and for all time, let it be said that UDel's ntp release can
>> contain any intellectual property which is not copyrighted under terms more
>> restrictive than the copyright statement UDel itself uses, as long as the
>> submitter can vouch for their own ownership of their code contribution.
>> 
>> so, UDel NTP can include copies of any part of BSD, or any BSD-copyrighted
>> work such as apache, BIND, et al; or any BSD-similar work such as MIT X11,
>> MIT Kerberos, et al.  UDel NTP will never be able to include any GPL'd code,
>> nor code whose contributor does not have the right to give under UDel's
>> favoured terms, nor code with any copyright statement not previously known
>> to be acceptable to Sun, HP, IBM, and other similar vendors whose lawyers
>> might otherwise come calling.
>> 
>> we can, i know now, all live with that.  what this means in practice is that
>> we will all feel free to incorporate or use any BSD-copyrighted code in NTP,
>> and that we will all feel free to stop talking about it, even if you mention
>> it again as you did at the top of this thread.  this topic is now "dead" and
>> the result is "UDel NTP can include anything that has a BSD-style copyright."
>
>As part of Debian, we have look at all the copyright
>statements and licenses in the source code.  As a result,
>there are some things we currently can't distribute
>because of a lack of license.

yes - funny that too.

>
>The rest of it mostly seem to be 3 clause BSD-style
>licenses, and 4 clause BSD licenses, the ISC license, and
>combinations of those.  Those are no problem at all.
>
>There is also some code (left) that is GPL, but it's not
>linked with the rest.
>
>
>Kurt
>
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