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.
>
> genpmda(1) looks like a handy place to start, but it emits per cluster
> source files that begin ...
>
> * Copyright (c) 2005 Silicon Graphics, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
>
> Now I don't think that is even legally correct:
> (a) it is not 2005, and (more importantly)
> (b) SGI did not create this source in the traditional sense of creating
> copyrightable material.
>
> So it would be nice if someone inside sgi could get legal to offer an
> opinion, and if I am right, then accept a patch to remove this copyright
> assertion from the output of genpmda.
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.
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.
> And the pmdas that are installed with source from the binary pcp
> packages (simple, trivial and txmon) are all sgi copyright and GPL'd.
>
> So I think we (the pcp-hackers of the world) need the source code for a
> reference pmda in the public domain to encourage new (and for the most
> part proprietary) pmdas to be developed for the new places pcp is being
> deployed.
>
> Thoughts?
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 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.
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.
mh
|