[En-Nut-Discussion] RFC: Copyright of trivial code

[Ulrich Prinz]

> 
> I came to the same conclusion.
> 
> Btw. many of these simple files had been created exclusively by me. 
> Ulrich had concerns, that I may change copyrights without getting the 
> original author involved. I have no intention to do so. On the other 
> hand, as the original author I'm free to re-release the same files at 
> any time under any license I wish. However, once released under BSDL, 
> I'm not able to withdraw that status from BSDL.
> 
I have no fears that you or the other major contributors step into my
back and modify the license of files in a way that it will be unusable
for me anymore. And it doesn't matter if there was 0, 1 line or 99%
already modified by me in a specific file.

But that would again rise a legal problem.
Let's say you are mentioned as the original author of a file and I
modified 90% of it at a time where the license matches my needs. Now you
claim your original creator rights and modify the license that renders
the file unusable for me...

I am not speaking of me and you in person, it's just an example but one
that could open pandoras box.

Another one:
The FSF requests to keep your GPL code available for three years after
_last_ product using that code left your factory. So lets say, the
product was in production for three years. Now somewhere in that time of
six years somebody changed the license in a file to GPL and now comes to
the idea to spend him and the FSF some money.

You then have to grep in six years of repositories to find out under
what license the product code had been designed and you have to state
that the developers had not changed the product firmware at a date after
modification of the license, where they must have seen, that license had
changed. And you might be forced to do that for every single file...

Again, this is just a worst case scenario and I am not against GPL or
FSF. I program for and under GPL and I like FSF to protect GPL rights.
But I am programming under BSD(L) for reason too. I support and
contribute to Nut/OS as a payment for the work it spares me if I need to
develop commercial products.

I'd like to see that the licenses stay as they are and I don't see any
harm or risk if there are some simple files that do not include any
copyright. Makefiles can only be build in a certain way to work and a
software patent for for(i=0;i<5;i++) isn't actually pending.

May be we should rework the readme.txt or the license.txt to state
- Contributed code must be under BSDL
- Contributed Code may be under GPL but may not take over existing files
license.
- Nut/OS lives from contribution like any other open source project, so
using it commercial saves time but should engage you to pay back by
contributing parts of your private code that do not disclose any of
your's company IP.

Example from me:
The wireless project I did before was based on a proprietary wireless
stack, so I couldn't contribute that, but I improved I2C, SPI, added Key
and LED functions, improved EEPROM...
The actual project added a unified driver for Sensirion sensor products,
ah I forgot, it added the CortexM3 :)

That's how it works.

Have a nice evening, guys
Ulrich