From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Nov 9 20:14:50 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from lists.blarg.net (lists.blarg.net [206.124.128.17]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B5FD137B41C; Fri, 9 Nov 2001 20:14:45 -0800 (PST) Received: from thig.blarg.net (thig.blarg.net [206.124.128.18]) by lists.blarg.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 654C0BD4E; Fri, 9 Nov 2001 20:14:45 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost.localdomain ([206.124.139.115]) by thig.blarg.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id UAA11280; Fri, 9 Nov 2001 20:14:45 -0800 Received: (from jojo@localhost) by localhost.localdomain (8.11.6/8.11.3) id fAA4CKi62040; Fri, 9 Nov 2001 20:12:20 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from swear@blarg.net) To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Subject: What is FreeBSD, Inc? From: swear@blarg.net (Gary W. Swearingen) Date: 09 Nov 2001 20:12:20 -0800 Message-ID: Lines: 31 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) XEmacs/21.1 (Cuyahoga Valley) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Much of the FreeBSD web site claims to be the property of "The FreeBSD Project". "The FreeBSD Copyright" at http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/freebsd-license.html claims that "FreeBSD, Inc." owns copyright on something, presumably more than that page, though it's not clear what. "The FreeBSD Handbook" claims that "The FreeBSD Documentation Project" owns copyright on the handbook. The home page of freebsd.org mentions "The FreeBSD Foundation" as a place to send money, but little more. What or who are these four entities? Do they have legal standing to own copyrights? Who or what holds what legal paperwork? I've looked for but not found answers at the freebsd.org web site and in the Handbook. The latter hints that the "core team" controls the project's direction, but curiously quotes "Board of Directors" as if it isn't a real, legal board and says nothing of incorporation, ownership, assets, charter/constitution, etc. It also seems strange that the web site doesn't mention trademarks. Shouldn't this sort of stuff be in a "Who are we?" or "Who owns FreeBSD?" or "Legal Matters" type of web page? Or does none of this sort of thing influence (potential) contributors or otherwise matter to anyone but nitpickers? To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message