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copyright, license, document, standard, code, trademark, etall



This has been an interesting, if sometimes frustrating, discussion. I
would like to put my last two cents in and then get on to more important
things.

First: The copyright is the legal authority for the license. The copyright
applies to the specific document described (or attached), and to a limited
extent to excerpts of the specific document.

Normal copyright looks like:

copyright 1998 Dale Scheetz All rights reserved.

The first part; "copyright 1998 Dale Scheetz" is the copyright, while the
second part; "All rights reserved." is the license. When the License
allows previously "reserved" actions, it is considered to be more free.

The GPL and the document I posted to the lcs-eng list are fundamentally
similar documents, even though there are subtle differences between them.

The GPL says that you may freely copy and distribute copies of the license
(document), but that you may not use the license as the foundation for
another license, and you may not distribute modified versions of the
license. The copyright/license I wrote for the validate script is
identical in all these respects. The only difference between the two
documents is that validate was primarily code (all the document parts were
by reference to, as yet unpublished lists, but covered by the copyright
statement). So what distinguishes documents that are code, from documents
that are only examples of code.

The distinction is intent. Some have said, "Well, it's code, so it is
obviously intended to be executed." To which I reply, "Have you ever heard
of ALGOL?". Even executable languages are not always used to be executed,
but rather as examples of other, meta level, principles. As intent can
only exist in the copyright holder, and not in the dear reader, I can
firmly say that this was my intent, the code was not intended as an
executable, as much as an explanation of what the, then current, vision of
the test bench looked like.

Some have said (even other places than this conversation) that the GPL is
infectious. I say it is an inoculant. The fundamental issue is that the
GPL does not allow itself to associate with other software that is not
itself already inoculated with the GPL. I suggest that the licence from
Phil is much more infectious. Consider:

YCDAL

You can do anything you wish with the material covered under this
copyright, as long as this notice always continues to appear along with
the material under this copyright.

The You Can Do Anything License is infectious, where the GPL is not. A
proprietary vendor can incorporate this code into proprietary licensed
code, because there is nothing restricting him from doing so (except
possibly his own intelligence). As soon as the proprietary author tries to
inforce his claim on the whole package as "his", some smart lawyer will
notice the YCDAL buried in the bowels of "his" code, and say, but, you
don't have the right to say that about this code. There is an even chance
the court would decide the only valid license was the YCDAL, and presto
chango the infection is complete.

One more point and we are ready to move on...

I really want to use the nested while loops Phil presented, but they
present a quandry which can only be resolved by using the GPL.

After his posting suggesting copyright infringement for providing the
suggestion by cutting and pasting my original post, I asked for the rights
to use this code. Now, while Phil did finaly say that the YCDAL applied,
he _did_ first apply the GPL. His later statement to the contrary, we are
now suck with that GPL code until Phil can release a second, upgrade to
the original GPL code, which it is my understanding he has the power to
do but probably not the inclination.

I have spoken to Erik Troan, and he is of the opinion that the board will
probably enforce the Standard through trademark control assigned to LI. As
the board is in "reorganization" at the moment, I see no reason to "stir
the pot" at the moment, even to just ask the question. This removes the
only reason I had for making the license as restritive as the one for the
GPL.

As a result, I will shortly be releasing the new "version" of the example
Standards Test Plan (STP) under the GPL, not only because I must, if I
want to accept Phil's new design, but because there is no longer a reason
not to.

My principle goal has been, and still is, to get some teamwork going on
this problem, so we can actually have a working standard to argue over the
copyright of ;-)

The nagging problem that is bothering me at the moment is the library
testing. We are looking for so links of particular names, and potentially
validating the existance and performance of specific routines in them, but
I am concerned that this is not enough. How do I validate that the
"standard" library interfaces are the ones that are served up by the
loader when programs are loaded?

More soon,

Dwarf
--
_-_-_-_-_-   Author of "The Debian Linux User's Guide"  _-_-_-_-_-_-

aka   Dale Scheetz                   Phone:   1 (850) 656-9769
      Flexible Software              11000 McCrackin Road
      e-mail:  dwarf@polaris.net     Tallahassee, FL  32308

_-_-_-_-_-_- If you don't see what you want, just ask _-_-_-_-_-_-_-


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