From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jim Choate To: <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Cc: Subject: Re: [9fans] Plan9 licence clarification In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2004 10:18:46 -0600 Topicbox-Message-UUID: f21dd202-eacc-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 Hi David, Thanks. I'll have to ponder this for a while. I'm sure it will raise more questions. On Mon, 23 Feb 2004, David Presotto wrote: > I've got to be more precise here, obviously. > > The license talks about two types of people > (that can be the same of course); contributors > and distributors. If you want what you wrote > to be a contribution, you must affirmatively > say it somewhere (like email to the Labs > or 9fans containing the contribution or announcing > it to the web). You are then a contributor and > your contribution and you are protected by the > license should anyone distribute it. > > A contributor also is required to provide source > and required to provide a 'royalty free > patent license...' to anyone that accepts the > license. > > If you want to distribute something containing > plan9 source or plan9 binaries you are a distributor > (D). A distributor can distribute under a different > license and doesn't have to disclose any source > that it not a 'contribution'. However, D's > license must be compatible with ours, i.e., > must have similar cover your ass clauses > (see the license for specifics, but I believe > most OSI licenses would be satisfactory). > > Also, if the distribution is commercial (for > recompense of some sort) the distributor must > indemnify all contributors against suits brought > as a result of actions taken by the distributor > (false claims, bad software, malicious behavior, ...). > > If you link your code with our libraries and distribute, we > have taken that not to be a distribution since the > only people that can run it are somehow in the chain > of licensee or distributor so that they would already > have the libraries. If you don't want to trust us > always being that nice, you can distribute your own > object files without the libraries since the end > user can link anyways. > > The salient point is that SOURCE YOU WRITE DOESN'T > HAVE TO BE MADE PUBLIC unless you call it a > contribution. So if you want to base something on > Plan 9 (including hacking kernel and libraries) > but don't want to give away your work, you can > do so. However, if you want to make money off of > it, you have to take financial responsibility for > your actions. -- -- Open Forge, LLC 24/365 Onsite Support for PCs, Networks, & Game Consoles 512-695-4126 (Austin, Tx.) help@open-forge.com Hangar 18 Open Source Distributed Computing Using Plan 9 & Linux 512-451-7087 http://open-forge.org/hangar18 James Choate 512-451-7087 ravage@ssz.com jchoate@open-forge.com