----- "Martin Hicks" <mort@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 02:56:42PM +1100, Ken McDonell wrote:
> > I was considering how to create a new PMDA that is not encumbered.
> > ...
> I don't even think we need to check with legal. It seems pretty
> clear
> that nobody has bothered to change genpmda since it was released.
There are minor changes in my branch...
> This code is GPL so we don't really have to ask SGI legal for
> permission
> to change it. I will gladly apply a patch if it is proposed.
>
> I'd be happy with no Copyright line at all and no $Id: line in the
> generated output.
In particular, the $Id line is gone there, and theres makefike
tweaks to make it function on Windows (off the top of my head,
possible other things too).
> So this part I can't really fix. You're worried that since the
> reference PMDAs are GPL, and must follow the derived-works clause,
> that
> some prospective customer might base their PMDA on the examples given
> and then release it with a GPL-incompatible license?
I'd guess Kens more thinking people will find it problematic to
use PCP, because they don't wish (for whatever reason) to release
code for custom PMDAs they write and ship to their customers.
> I don't know that this is a huge deal. Any non-trivial PMDA is
> likely
> to be so different from the provided examples that it could no longer
> be
> considered a derived work.
Hmm... thats not entirely clear - if you start from an existing PMDA
source, and change it (even extensively) ... it seems a fairly gray
area at best as to when it is no longer "derived". People ideally
should not have to worry about that, is what Kens saying (I think!)
and should be free to choose whatever license they wish for releasing
their PMDA.
> That said, I certainly wouldn't reject any patch that adds a public
> domain PMDA example if there is concensus that this is a real
> problem.
I wouldn't expect there to be any issue either - a public domain
template PMDA may be the way to go? The template.c (client) code
in the pcpqa tree is in a similar boat really, and would have similar
issues. It seems to have no license annotations at all, strangely.
If someone does go write a template PMDA (or change genpmda to create
one), please make sure it works on all platforms. txmon doesn't work
on Windows, so a drop-in replacement for that might be handy.
cheers.
--
Nathan
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