ken@gvax.cs.cornell.edu (Ken Birman) (09/21/90)
I was asked about the copyright notice associated with the ISIS V2.1 release, which takes two forms: 1) in the system README file: The source files in this release are subject to copyright, and may be used only in unmodified form and with the copyright notice preserved in all cases. Development of derivative versions of the ISIS system may be subject to restriction. Contact the ISIS Project for details or for explicit permission to include modified versions of this system into products. 2) On a typical source file: The contents of this file are subject to a joint, non-exclusive copyright by Ken Birman and the ISIS Project. Permission is granted for use of this material in unmodified form in commercial or research settings. Creation of derivative forms of this software may be subject to restriction; obtain written permission from the ISIS Project in the event of questions or for special situations. We've had some questions about the term "unmodified form" from commercial groups using ISIS. Here's the basic position we are adopting. Both Cornell and the government agree that copyright on the software developed subsequent to the ISIS V1.0 "public domain" release rests with the authors. Most of the system has changed extensively since then, notably on the change from V1.3.1 to V2.0. The authors are primarily myself and other current members of the ISIS project. Our intent is to have ISIS Distributed Systems treat their commercial version of ISIS as a protected, proprietary product. Our position is strengthened by holding and enforcing copyright on the current release. You have a permission to use the system as we handed it out, perhaps with minor bug fixes or parameter changes, in your products or as an environment on which your products would run. If you preserve the copyright notice you have complied with our "restrictions". We view ports of ISIS as minor changes and you have our permission to undertake them. We encourage people to consider releasing ports in the form of patches for use by the extended ISIS user community. You would be in violation of our copyright notice if you adapted the system through extensive changes (but starting with our source) to arrive at a product which you then marketed. For example, we would not want to see a "Bandersnatcher Distributed Computing Toolkit" on the market with an astonishing resemblence to our system and without our written consent. We will be happy to discuss any sort of special concerns that you (or your lawyers) may have about all this. In fact, we will probably agree to almost anything reasonable so long as we know about it. Ken