Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 11:14:48 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: Herb Peyerl <hpeyerl@netbsd.org> Cc: core@FreeBSD.ORG, core@netbsd.org, cgd@netbsd.org, ross@netbsd.org, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Copyright infringement in FreeBSD/alpha Message-ID: <3356.897588888@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 11 Jun 1998 07:57:47 MDT." <199806111357.HAA02509@beer.org>
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> Ok, now that you've all had time to throw your diapers around; here's > how this is going to work in the future: [speaking for FreeBSD-core] Herb, While I respect the fact that this idea may represent your best effort at bringing law and order to these currently mean streets, it also strikes many of us in FreeBSD-core as something of an over-engineered solution for a problem which honestly and truly is just not that complex. I also appreciate that you called for a hiatus on this issue, but you also requested a response from us before June 15th so here is it. >From our perspective, this is all quite simple. If one of our committers should find his code plagiarized or otherwise incorporated into any other *BSD, be it NetBSD or OpenBSD, without proper attribution then he will simply contact the committer in question and ask, not demand, that the omission be rectified. Should that other *BSD committer be indeterminate or unresponsive to such queries after a reasonable period of time, then the committer will send a 2nd message to *BSD-core, just as they would for any other problem involving some "administrative issue" with that OS, and hope for a resolution through that forum. Under no circumstances will our committer also send his complaints to foobsd-hackers, foobsd-announce or any other public mailing list for which the issue is truly not pertinent and good only for raising unnecessary passions. Should sending a message to foobsd-core also prove ineffective as a last resort in resolving such problems, I think I can safely say that this would be indicative of such a state of crisis in relations or general responsiveness from foobsd that no "designated representative" (especially one who's already a member of foobsd-core) would change a thing about it anyway. In any case, that's essentially our policy as it stands now and I find the evidence insufficiently compelling that changing it would result in any more positive results than we're currently seeing. Moreover, if we could have simple *parity* with respect to our mutual policies for committers as outlined above, I think we'd have far fewer problems and freebsd-core, of course, stands more than ready and willing to resolve any issues you or any other NetBSD committer may raise in the future. Designating a single representative is really not a necessary component in making someone in FreeBSD more "accountable" for such mistakes and it only creates a single point of failure should someone attempt to contact our "delegate" during a period of unavailability. The last thing we need is for someone to go ballistic at the lack of a timely response, bringing us all crashing back down to here again. I furthermore think that the policy which I've outlined is a good one given that it's also applicable to a far greater category of potential conflicts than copyright issues alone, I myself never having seen the point of publicly airing *any* type of dispute between the *BSDs given that it only hands additional ammunition to various mutual competitors who are already more than sufficiently armed as it is, thank you. If we get a vote here, and I'm hoping that we're discussing your proposal as a potential option rather than an externally imposed mandate, then we'd prefer to vote for exercising simple common sense in the future rather than adopting additional constraints on our communications. Regards, - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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