ken@gvax.cs.cornell.edu (Ken Birman) (05/10/89)
Over the two years that ISIS has been available, I have received the following style of comment from several people: >In article <27301@cornell.UUCP> you write: >>Source is included, but the system is in the public >>domain, and is released on condition that any ports to other sys- >>tems or minor modifications remain in the public domain. >The terms "public domain" and "released on condition" contradict one another. >You probably want either a Gnu style copyleft or the simpler Kermit style >copyright (of course DARPA funding might mean that it is pd no matter what >you want). If you release the software into the public domain you cannot >prevent people from selling it, with or without changes and with or without >acknowledging its source. If you wish to impose non-commercial restrictions >you should probably have the university lawyer write something up. > >It sounds like a nifty project. >-- >Jim Prescott moscom!jgp@cs.rochester.edu > {rutgers,ames,harvard}!rochester!moscom!jgp It seems like this might be a good place to respond to this whole issue. First, the question of whether or not ISIS is in the public domain: as far as I can tell, because we were funded by DARPA and DARPA wants software to be in the public, the answer on this is a clear "yes". Second, regarding what you do with it. Obviously, nothing precludes the use of ISIS to develop commercial software -- in fact, by now there seem to be at least half a dozen groups doing just this. Such software would normally be proprietary. As a matter of fact, I have a company that is quite prepared to help you develop such software. I think this is entirely appropriate and I want to encourage people to take ISIS seriously and seriously consider such an undertaking. If you need commercial quality support for ISIS to do so -- give us a ring. Now, as Jim points out, if ISIS is really in the public domain, nothing stops other organizations from picking it up and doing what they like with it, even selling it. Thus, the conditions that my group generally asks users to cooperate with are legally meaningless. On the other hand, we would probably not help fix bugs in a version of ISIS being sold by some company out there. In practical terms, my sense is that if people don't cooperate with us, ISIS will probably be of limited value to them in the long run. Like any system, it needs support, and like most systems, the support has to come from the people that developed the code. So, if you want our help supporting your MIPS port, for example, we'll be happy to help if you put the port in the public domain too. If you want it to be proprietary, thats quite legal, but it is unclear that you would find the long-term situation viable. Finally, regarding the restrictions on export of ISIS. Several years ago the US Congress passed a law making it illegal to export networking software to Eastern-block and other "non-free-world countries". There is a somewhat obscure list of countries to which this applies, and I see little reason that most of them would want ISIS anyhow. To export ISIS to these destinations, you would need an export license. DARPA tells me these would normally be granted if requested. So, to protect myself, I have been asking that people who pick up ISIS confirm that they are aware of this restriction. The trick case is when you pass ISIS to a colleague in, say, France. You would need to ask that person to agree (transitively) to seek agreement from his/her colleagues who might get access to the source, etc... This is called "re-export". My position has been that if you agree to abide by the USDC regulations on this, it is out of my hands. So, you see, even public domain software is subject to certain limitations. On the other hand, by now at least 100 copies of ISIS have gone overseas. If you have an interest in discussing commercial support for ISIS, please don't hesitate to contact me. Our approach is going to be based on the INGRES model. We plan to (indefinitely) maintain a public version of ISIS for the general public, but also to introduce -- at some point -- an enhanced, commercially supported version, which people could license from ISIS Distributed Systems. This version would also come with some rather interesting applications, aimed at network management and administration and at the construction of reliable software for serious, large-scale systems. We hope to reach that point in 2 years. Meanwhile, we hope to see an active user group playing with ISIS, complaining about bugs, and exchanging software. We promise to fix the bugs. (This promise has no legal significance). (But you can trust us; we are basically nice people). Ken