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Date:      Wed, 10 Jun 1998 21:19:43 +0000 (GMT)
From:      Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>
To:        thorpej@nas.nasa.gov
Cc:        freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, core@FreeBSD.ORG, cgd@netbsd.org, ross@netbsd.org, core@netbsd.org
Subject:   Re: Copyright infringement in FreeBSD/alpha
Message-ID:  <199806102119.OAA12095@usr01.primenet.com>
In-Reply-To: <199806101905.MAA23788@lestat.nas.nasa.gov> from "Jason Thorpe" at Jun 10, 98 12:05:13 pm

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> [ Chris/Ross - I CC'd you so that are aware of it, and so that you can
>   watch out for it in the future... Also, Chris... who's the right
>   person at CMU to notify about this? ]
> 
> So, I decided to take a look at the FreeBSD/alpha code that got checked
> in today.
> 
> Nice to see that the CMU copyright was left out of locore.s, even though
> e.g. the following pieces were lifted basically verbatim from the NetBSD/alpha
> locore.s:

[ ... ]

I don't think this was intentional "theft of work"; I think you just
got an intermediate tree; clearly FreeBSD doesn't yet run on Alpha
enough for it to be an issue.  Yet.  It will *definitely* be an issue
later, however.

Did you contact Doug directly?


Also: isn't there precedent for removal of per-file copyright notices
in favor of agregate notices?  It may be that at least the CMU code is
already covered under one of the blanket statements.

I know that some of my code was "blanketed" in the same way by other
BSD's (and even in VXWorks, from one vendor).

I know that I was personally *real* offended by /bin/true and /bin/false
have a zillion lines of copyright in them for a near-noop... though not
as offended as when they were converted to binaries for stupid "copyright
and intellectual protperty" claims.

Certainly, credit that is not covered in a blanket statement should
be given on individual files.


Part of the problem may be that FreeBSD has a larger exposure of the
internals of the source code control; is it more correct to commit the
blanket copyright statement before the code, or vice versa?  At what
point is it required that the blanket statement be checked in... at
the instant the other file is checked in?  That's impossible.  I think
the answer is "as soon as is reasonable and prudent".

That said, the exposed internals of the FreeBSD source control could
certainly cause the commits to be construed as publication; therefore
the blanket and/or file statements might have a requirement of being
in sooner rather than later, when the code is actually usable on an
Alpha system not running Linux.


					Terry Lambert
					terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.

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