RE: Copyright issues -- IMPORTANT

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Here is Brad's (now-somewhat stale) response to the list:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: Copyright issue
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 21:44:43 -0700
From: Brad Schrock <[email protected]>
To: 'Zach Welch' <[email protected]>

Howdy!

Zach's right regarding the copyright notices.  Gentoo's cannot really be
removed (figuring out the scope of their rights is another matter - a
real can of worms).

Defining "substantial" contribution is tough - probably the best
understanding is that of the "code writers".  Any words you use to
define it are going to end up with a substitute for "substantial" I
think.  (e.g., a significant and not immaterial contribution, etc. etc.)

Brad

---- end of forwarded message ----

This forward sat as a draft for about a week; I thought I had sent it.
I'm sending it now because Gentoo sent our attorneys a letter stating
that we are distributing files that have a Zynot copyright line added
without any substantial changes.

The files in question were created very early on using a tool that added
the copyright, and they were meant to be used internally by our
developers.  The files have been taken down as they are no longer even
relevant, and I was somewhat surprised to find they were still around.

In the future, our efforts will be focused around the new trees
currently under development at http://svn.zynot.org/, and we will take
appropriate responsibility to ensure that the community understands our
commitment to upholding copyright laws.  We are drafting a Contributor
Copyrighting Guide that briefly explains the best practices, and input
is welcome to be added to the following Bugzilla task:

http://bugs.zynot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32

Further, it is very important that we proceed with careful awareness of
this matter; if not promptly resolved, this action by Gentoo could serve
as a preliminary step before proceeding with an injunction or similar
legal action.  As the offending files have already been removed, this
current matter should now be satisfactorily resolved.

Despite any resolution regarding the current dispute, our future actions
will undoubtably come under this same kind of scrutiny.  We must all
work together to ensure that we do not again expose ourselves to these
kinds of potential liabilities in the future.

I hope this matter can be resolved quickly, but it should serve notice
to our community.  We will be both Gentoo's favorite target for abuse
and their biggest threat for competition, apparently in that order given
we haven't even annouced our distribution's availability. :)

Cheers,

Zach


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