From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Jan 30 04:04:34 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id EAA15111 for hackers-outgoing; Fri, 30 Jan 1998 04:04:34 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from arg1.demon.co.uk (arg1.demon.co.uk [194.222.34.166]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id EAA15093 for ; Fri, 30 Jan 1998 04:04:28 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from arg@arg1.demon.co.uk) Received: (from arg@localhost) by arg1.demon.co.uk (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA00590; Fri, 30 Jan 1998 12:07:25 GMT Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 12:06:49 +0000 (GMT) From: Andrew Gordon X-Sender: arg@server.arg.sj.co.uk To: Brian Somers cc: dmaddox@scsn.net, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: The BSD License In-Reply-To: <199801300203.CAA26796@awfulhak.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG X-To-Unsubscribe: mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org "unsubscribe hackers" On Fri, 30 Jan 1998, Brian Somers wrote: > I'm not sure that this is the correct question either. > > The rfc seems to indicate to me that they are not willing to give > their software away without at least an NDA. That in itself is not a > problem if they're willing to tell us (or me) how to implement the > algorithm (and don't place any restrictions on that knowledge). If > they were willing to do this, I would have thought it would already > be explained in the rfc. Unfortunately it isn't. Are you sure? The RFC implies that the information it contains, plus the information in ANSI X3.241-1994 is a complete definition of the protocol. > We need to ask them if they will give us enough knowledge to > implement STAC compression *without* an NDA, without any licensing > requirements and so that the resulting code can be distributed with > FreeBSD for the world to see and use without restriction on that > usage. This `knowledge' may be in source code form already or it > may be a spec.... > > Feel free to give 'em my name, although I'm no expert on copyrights. I suspect the issue may be one of Patent licencing rather than copyright.