| Re: [chrony-users] chronyd C&M protocol licensing |
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See below.
William G. Unruh __| Canadian Institute for|____ Tel: +1(604)822-3273
Physics&Astronomy _|___ Advanced Research _|____ Fax: +1(604)822-5324
UBC, Vancouver,BC _|_ Program in Cosmology |____ unruh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Canada V6T 1Z1 ____|____ and Gravity ______|_ www.theory.physics.ubc.ca/
On Mon, 3 Jan 2022, Brad Hards wrote:
[CAUTION: Non-UBC Email]
On Monday, 3 January 2022 5:41:31 PM AEDT Bill Unruh wrote:
Well, if you want to be sure, do like Phoenix did with the IBM bios for the
PC. You get one person/team to write out the specification from the source
code for exactly what the data strucures, and queries are. Then you get
another person team which has never seen the code, only the apecification,
and inpliments the program from that, being very careful to document what
was done to ensure that they never saw the source code.
Yes. That is one option.
You cannot do that yourself, unless you can convince a court that you
sffered a bought of total amnesia between wrting the specification and
writing the code. Otherwise believe the presumption would be that what you
write would be a derived work.
I don't think it is that clear, but I accept that as a defensible position.
Alternatively, you can get a special licence from the copyright holder to do
what you want. Exactly who the copyright holder would be for chrony is
unclear as a number of people have worked on it and contributed to it.
I don't know how to interpret this statement. Is it "friendly advice from
another user", or are you speaking on behalf of the project?
I am not speaking for the project.
Thirdly you could do as you like and hope none of the copyright holders
sue you.
This is an option, but not one I am comfortable with. I had hoped it was
obvious that I was acknowledging the license. If I did not want to respect
licenses, I wouldn't have asked the question.
It is unclear to me which provision of GPL2 you want to violate. Do you want
to release it as prprietary code, and sue anyone who copies it? Do you want
to allow others to do that?
I find this a bit offensive. I do not want to violate the license. I am trying
to make open source software (as noted in my original email), and I'd like to
make it as widely useful as possible. As a Java library, that implies Apache
licensing.
Either my code is a derived work of chrony and it has to be GPL v2 (because
Clause 2), or it isn't, and I can provide it under my choice of license. I'd
like the maintainers' advice.
Whether or not your code is a derived work is a legal question, since the
concept of "derived work" is a legal one. It is "defined" in the copyright
law, and in a variety of judgements of the courts in various cases. The
maintainer cannot define it or state whether or not your actions bring your
work under the definition. Only the courts can do so. Your best tack would
seem to me to be either to release it under GPL2, or to get a separate licence
for your program allowing you to release it as you wish. Or to get legal
advice as to whether or not what you are writing is "derivative" under
copyright law.
Note that, as I understand it, even if the maintainer states that some piece
of code is his, as part of a derived work, it would still fall under the
copyright of the whole work. The same problem would be there in finding
someone to write you a separate licence-- who would have the authority to do
so for all the people who hold copyright in all the bits and pieces (eg, at
least Curnoe and Lichtvar).
My intention was not to be offensive. Copyright law as I understand it, is a
mess, and multi million dollar lawsuits have been fought over things like what
does "derivative work" mean, and the application of those terms to software.
So to really be "safe", just going with the most restrictive licence would be
the best opition. Otherwise, you will have to judge what the probability is
the someone will try to come after you.
Note that I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
OK. Thanks.
Brad
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