mouse@LARRY.MCRCIM.MCGILL.EDU (der Mouse) (09/19/89)
My my, I really seem to have started something. > In article <8909131235.AA13992@fnord.umiacs.UMD.EDU> steve@UMIACS.UMD.EDU writes: >> If Dave Mack is getting beaten up for no more reason than has been >> described, > Whoa there. I'm the Dave Mack in question and as far as I know, no > copyright death squads are hunting me. They said they're going to > send me a letter. I'll probably survive it, unless they meant > letterbomb. So it's a slightly more genteel - and undoubtedly more legal - way of beating you up. Just because the bludgeon is a threat of legal action instead of a baseball bat, I don't see much difference. > I think you have excessive expectations regarding what the Open > Software Foundation is all about. The OSF products are "open" to OSF > members. Some "open" software, that. Not that it matters, from my point of view. (Someone else posted something saying that this isn't quite so: something about $1k, member or not - I don't know where the truth lies and really don't care.) >> then I see myself in a situation where I can't post context diffs to >> Motif sources, for fear of legal retaliation from some droid at OSF. > While the conversation I had did not deal with context diffs, the > warning I got strongly suggests that posting diffs would not be > appreciated by the OSF legal staff. The gentleman I spoke to gave me > e-mail addresses for some mailing lists specifically for the > transmission of bug reports and patches. If the OSF thinks a mailing list is an acceptable substitute for a newsfroup, I definitely don't trust their technical ability. >> Can someone from OSF present the OSF side of the story, and/or a >> public apology to Dave Mack and to the sensibilities of the net, >> depending on which is appropriate? > Dave Mack neither wants nor requires a public apology. Clearly, from your original posting. While I'm not the person who requested the apology for you and/or the net, I agree with the person who did. Not because you want it or need it, but for what it would mean from the OSF. > Please get it straight, folks: Motif is the intellectual property of > the OSF. [...] They're within their rights in asking me not to post > pieces of their code. Oh, undoubtedly. They're just being unreasonable. (In my opinion, and, apparently, others'.) As you say, we've become accustomed to it. Nobody squawks when I post a diff to our kernel, even though the code falls under various copyrights. Nobody complains about tcsh, which is distributed in the form of source diffs (last I heard). If the OSF is going to get all huffy about their Legal Rights, well, too bad for them, but I (and others) will have nothing to do with them. In their case, I find it particularly hypocritical in view of their name. (Actually, this sort of nonsense is one reason I think intellectual property should not exist. This is not the place to go into more detail, though; I'll be glad to correspond privately on the subject.) > I appreciate the support from those who have posted, but there are > more important issues to get worked up about. Let's keep this in > perspective, OK? Someone else, I think it's ron@xwind.com, says > As far as posting diffs are concerned, OSF maintains mailing lists to > which Motif source licencees (both members and nonmembers) can be > added. All mail sent to these mailing lists (including diffs) can be > received by everyone with a (legal) copy of the Motif source. Since > these mailing lists exist, it just doesn't make sense to post diffs > to public newsgroups. Do *you* trust mailing lists? *I* don't. I much prefer newsgroups, for many reasons. One: you don't have to try to figure out a complicated mishmash of !, %, @, ::, etc to shove the mail through various gateways to get it to you. And then figure it out all over again when one of the gateways changes OS version or mailer configuration. Two: if a letter from the mailing list to you is dropped, it's gone for good. If a news message is dropped, it gets picked up when it arrives via another path. Three: mesh rather than star topology (*I* sure don't want to be a neighbor of the machine they run that mailing list from!). > From: paperboy!osf!dbrooks@husc6.harvard.edu (David Brooks) > Organization: Open Software Foundation Ah, something from the horse's mouth. > Source is available to *anyone*, as of last July 21. For $1k (I will assume this is the amount, since it's the last amount anyone mentioned on the list)? And, I assume, with nondisclosure? Sorry, I'll take plain X. By ftp from MIT. No fuss, no legal droids calling me up to threaten to slap my bank account because I tried to help my friends fix a bug. >> [about mailing lists for bug reports etc] > If you have a license, you have access to the lists; if you don't, > you don't need it. Is that really true, or do you mean "if your organization has a license, someone at your organization has access to the lists"? What level do you license at? If (arguendo) McGill buys Motif, who exactly at McGill is allowed to look at the source? Three persons named in the license agreement? Yeah, right. How *useful*. Well, I think we must agree to disagree. der Mouse old: mcgill-vision!mouse new: mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu