svn commit: r356142 - in head/sys: dev/ofw sys

[Jeff Roberson]

On Sun, 29 Dec 2019, Kevin P. Neal wrote:

> On Sat, Dec 28, 2019 at 10:11:48AM -1000, Jeff Roberson wrote:
>> It seems to be the prevailing theory that headers are not even really
>> copyrightable.  This has even been tested in court a few times (bsd, java).
>>
>> http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0301.1/0362.html
>>
>> The original definitions from this file were part of posix.1b and so it's
>> hard to argue they are anything but public.  Coincidentally I know Greg and
>
> Wow is Google v Oracle going to screw this up. I fully expect the US Supreme
> Court to make a total hash of that case and cause havoc for the whole
> software industry.
>
> The right thing for FreeBSD to do is decrease the size of the attack surface
> by getting the licenses as straight as possible. IMHO. But IANAL.
>
>> In my opinion, this has already wasted everyone's time with an irrelevant
>> nit-picking argument.  The onus is not on Pedro to chase this down just so
>
> Lawyers make a living nit-picking. That's why one has to be very careful
> to do a preemptive nit-pick before they get involved.

I personally participated when a fortune < 100 company sent a team of 
lawyers to audit the licensing terms of FreeBSD to ensure compliance in a 
multi-billion dollar a year product.  None of them batted an eye at this. 
It is my understanding that this has taken place multiple times and once 
even resulted in phk receiving an official beer from a similarly sized 
company per the terms of his beerware license.  Do we actually believe 
that someone somewhere is going to sue the project or it's users on behalf 
of myself or greg because the user is in compliance with one bsd license 
and not the other?  I trust the lawyer's opinions over yours.

The problem here isn't the license.  It's that everyone who allegedly 
thinks this is of such dire importance that they must continue spaming the 
list and arguing about it hasn't thought it important enough to send a 
single email to Greg Ansley so they personally can commit a 
simplification.  It literally would've taken less time to simply copy 
Greg, ask approval, and commit a change and no one would've argued.  I 
would argue that we don't even need greg's approval to copy 8 standards 
defined function prototypes.  Richard Stallman seems to argue the same and 
I guarantee he's spent more time with copyright lawyers than any of us.

I assert that the point here is not the license at all or it would've been 
resolved already.  I see a lot of low effort sniping on the list off and 
on since my return to opensource.  In most cases it is not even from 
particularly active contributors.  It is very discourging to donate time 
and energy to the project only to be rewarded with criticism delivered 
with an air of superiority.  It drives people away at a time when 
operating systems are all facing declining and aging developer 
populations.

Jeff


> -- 
> Kevin P. Neal                                http://www.pobox.com/~kpn/
>           On the community of supercomputer fans:
> "But what we lack in size we make up for in eccentricity."
>  from Steve Gombosi, comp.sys.super, 31 Jul 2000 11:22:43 -0600
>