Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 21:16:29 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: blk@skynet.be (Brad Knowles) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert), allenc@verinet.com (Allen Campbell), freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: This is stupid Message-ID: <200003172116.OAA20845@usr02.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <v0422080fb4f816186078@[195.238.1.121]> from "Brad Knowles" at Mar 17, 2000 06:10:51 PM
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> > A new installer might emerge, if there were money in it for > > someone to do the work. It seems to me that the only way it > > can be moved forward at this point is to pay someone to do > > the unpleasent work, and the only way that someone will pay > > for this is if they can recoup their investment. > > Jordan has tried this route on two previous occasions, and the > only positive result was some tools that they wrote in the process of > attempting to write the installer, and while the installer never > happened on either occasion the tools are still of interest and > potentially highly useful. > > I don't think that going down this same road again is likely to > be any more productive than it has been in the past. I was talking about a third party paying for the work and being permitted to distribute CDROM copies of the work to recoup their investment. My personal presference would be fore something similar to my proposal for software patents being the general rule for use of the trademark: o By default, you get no protection o If you file a source escrow, you are protected for 2 years, and may volunteer for a shorter term o After the term of the S-patent (in this case, the terms of the trademark usage license), your code goes into the public domain from the escrow (or rights are assigned to the FreeBSD Foundation) I personally would remove patent and copyright protection from all software, in favor of this approach, since the software industry operates at a much higher pace than the industries that process patents were originally designed to protect. I have yet to see a 10 year wait while the FSA decides whether a new piece of software is safe for the public... > What I think *will* cause a new installer to be written is for > someone like Jordan or Paul to decide to simply sit down, lock the > door, take the phone off the hook, and have pizza and soft drinks > periodically shoved under the door until such time as the code is > done. Or if someone is hired by Brett to do the work, sits down, locks the door, and prostitutes their coding talents working on something unglamorous in exchange for money, as all us professional code hacks do at one time or another (only unpaid code hacks can retain their amatuer status, and compete in the Olympics). > > It might be reasonable for the foundation to require a two year > > maximum trust in order to use the trademark, i.e. you can use > > the trademark on a derivative work that replaces the installer > > if you place the code in trust, and within two years (or less) > > of first release, the code becomes the property of the foundation. > > Assuming that the project as a whole passes with their approval > initially (and they get to review that decision every time there is a > new major version), I think that this might be a decent balance of > advantage for the developer versus the long-term common good for all. > > However, whether the FreeBSD Core Team and the FreeBSD Foundation > agree is another matter entirely. And they are unlikely to see all of this on -chat, in any case. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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