Re: [WARNING] DO NOT _EVER_ SEND CODE VIA HOTMAIL
Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS said:
> Aaron Lehmann <aaronl@vitelus.com>:
>
> > The problem? In a nutshell, any outgoing information, software
> > and/or services of your original copyright/license/IP are "dual
> > copyrighted/licensed" to Microsoft c/o this new agreement. This can
> > be _very_dangerous_ from the standpoint of free software
> > development.
>
> Why is this "very dangerous"? How does it hurt a GPL software project
> if some part of it is dual licensed to Microsoft?
What if I don't want my code licensed except under the GPL?
>
> Do you also believe that it is very dangerous for part of a GPL
> software project to be licensed under the X11 licence?
I believe it's dangerous to relicense code outside of the author's wishes.
If the author wants the code strictly GPL'd, it should stay GPL'd.
>
> > 1. "Identify" users who are using these services when they contact
> > your web site, archive, CVS repository, etc... They need not only
> > be informed of these issues -- but they need to "sign" a "counter
> > agreement" that they agree to the policies of our site, archive,
> > repository, etc... which either "prohibit" uploading from services
> > where there is such an agreement and/or somehow put the
> > responsibility on the consumer and/or service to NOT allow such
> > "dual-copyright/licensure" rights to be applicable to those original
> > works.
As I point out below, the legal question is whether or not MS has any
claim to copyrighted materials NOT authored by the person using the
service.
At minimum, everyone using these systems better read it very carefully -
MS is claiming literally that they have the right to use anything you pass
through the system in any way they want, without any recompense to you
(i.e. that business plan you just e-mailed to your investors now belongs
to MS).
>
> Why? If someone who is contributing to a free software project wants,
> for whatever reason, to dual licence their code to Microsoft, you
> can't really stop them from doing so. If you insist that all
> contributors give an exclusive licence to the organisation running the
> project, then you will probably find that this discourages people from
> contributing. Usually software authors like to retain their own rights
> in the software they produce.
Again, the problem is that Microsoft is claiming all rights to anything
passing through their servers. If you don't mind that, go ahead and use
the system.
It does bring up the question about MS being able to in any way make a
claim on code that is being redistributed through their systems, but not
by the author (example, e-mailing of patch files, that get re-mailed from
a mailing list, to a hotmail account).
jeff
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Jeffry Smith Technical Sales Consultant Mission Critical Linux
smith@missioncriticallinux.com phone:603.930.9739 fax:978.446.9470
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