Re: [Savannah-hackers] blueos

[Sylvain BEUCLER]

Hello,

Criteria to be hosted at Savannah are primarily to run on a free
operating system (non proprietary dependencies), to be licensed under
a GNU General Public License compatible license, and to contain the
appropriate copyright and license notices in each non-trivial file.

The last one permits to avoid legal issues.
Maybe you'll be interested in reading this:
http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain_4.html

You do not have to include a copy of the GNU [L]GPL in each file, we
are talking about a license notice, stating the file is released under
the GNU GPL (not the GNU GPL itself), along with an appropriate
copyright notice.

Note that the requirement is to be compatible with the GNU GPL, not
the GNU LGPL. We feel that being compatible with the GNU GPL is an
important issue, and we do not host GPL-incompatible code at Savannah,
although we accept that projects rely on GPL-incompatible but free
software hosted at another place.

We indeed do focus on aspects related to user freedom, more than on
technical ones, so the licensing terms are important to us.

I understand it is not a very interesting job to add license and
copyright notices; legal issues have be dealt with at a point or
another of the development, though.

Regards,

-- 
Sylvain
PS: oh yeah, code like
void main(void) {
        return 0;
}
is small enough not to include a copy of the GNU GPL
(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#TOCWhatIfWorkIsShort)
;)


On Sun, Aug 22, 2004 at 11:14:19PM +0200, Guillaume Maillard wrote:
> Hi Sylvain,
> 
> Sorry for the delay, we went in deep discussion after reading your
> answer. It appears that licence is more important than anything else,
> 
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhyMustIInclude
> explicitly talk about the "every copy of the program" not "every source code 
> file"
> and you complain about "space constraints"??
> Everything in the project IS LGPL compatible, the "old BSD" argument is 
> irrevelant.
> We asked ourself if we shouldn't replace all the code with
> a GPL copyright file in which we could add:
> int void main(int a, char**b){
>       return 0;
> } 
> 
> My answer will surely look, for you a bit hard, but as
> a software engineer who everyday codes programs 
> (and is well paid for that) instead
> of making computo-religious crusade; I'm more attached
> at innovation and quality in software...
> 
> Regards,
> G.
> 
> 
> > As we have not had a response from you, we have deleted your project
> > from the pending queue.  If you would still like to have your project
> > hosted at Savannah, please re-submit it for evaluation.
> > 
> > Regards,
> > 
> > -- 
> > Sylvain
> > 
> > On Sat, Aug 07, 2004 at 11:18:32AM +0200, Sylvain Beucler wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > I'm evaluating the project you submitted for approval in Savannah.
> > > 
> > > >BlueEyed OS
> > > >
> > > >Project Admins:
> > > >Guillaume Maillard <address@hidden> ;
> > > >
> > > >Registration Date:
> > > >Sun 01/25/2004 at 19:59
> > > >
> > > >System Group Name:
> > > >blueos
> > > >
> > > >Submitted Description:
> > > >
> > > >The project is mainly a creation of a new operating system based on
> > > >a linux kernel. It has a complete C++ API and a multithreaded
> > > >approach which result of impressive performance. It comes from a
> > > >closed source project which is now LGPL. You can look at
> > > >http://www.BlueEyedOS.com for more informatique. A snapshot of the
> > > >source code is available at:
> > > >http://blueos.free.fr/BEOS_250503.tar.gz
> > > >
> > > >Required software:
> > > >libjpeg linux kernel gcc
> > > >
> > > >Other comments:
> > > 
> > > We do not host distributions of operating systems, mainly because of
> > > space and bandwidth constraints. Also, we prefer to have an
> > > aggregation of work split into different projects.
> > > 
> > > However, your project seems pretty small, and I am not sure on whether
> > > it could be easily split into different projects.
> > > 
> > > Let's say that if you think your project will stay as small (< 10M) as
> > > is it now, it will not worth splitting it.
> > > 
> > > I see that your project contains a lot of separate projects. If some
> > > of them are available somewhere else, and unless you are their current
> > > maintainer, maybe it would be better not to host them at Savannah (you
> > > could still include them in releases). I mainly think of the code
> > > examples, and the 'stubgen' tool.
> > > 
> > > Can you detail that point so we can decide whether or not to split the 
> > > project into several accounts?
> > > 
> > > 
> > > On to licensing issues:
> > > 
> > > Before releasing your project under the LGPL, please place
> > > copyright notices and permission to copy statements at the beginning
> > > of every file of source code.  In addition, if you haven't already, 
> > > please copy a copy of the plain
> > > text version of the LGPL, available from
> > > (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.txt), into a file named "COPYING".
> > > 
> > > Additional instructions are available from
> > > http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html.
> > > 
> > > The GPL FAQ explains why these procedures must be followed.  To learn
> > > why a copy of the LGPL must be included with every copy of the code,
> > > for example, go to
> > > http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhyMustIInclude
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Some files owned by Be, Inc, do not have clear notice statement (only a
> > > copyright statement), for example those in headers/be. Can you add a
> > > license notice to these files, so we can check for (L)GPL-compatiblity
> > > issues?
> > > 
> > > FlexLexer.h in headers/gnu is released under the old BSD license,
> > > which is incompatible with the GPL. All files (C) The Regents of the
> > > University of California should now be available under a modified BSD
> > > license that removes the old-fanishioned and problematic advertising
> > > clause. Please replace this file with one released under a
> > > GPL-compatible license.
> > > 
> > > We also need to know the license of ttfonts.
> > > 
> > > Files under the Be Sample Code License (and marked as such) are
> > > compatible with the (L)GPL and do not need additional work.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > There are a lot of other files that miss license and copyright notices. 
> > > Please fix those. Keep in mind that:
> > > 1) we only host code compatible with the GNU GPL
> > > 2) we will check all your source files :)
> > > 3) I used the old tarball you uploaded at your free.fr account. If you 
> > > have an updated version (even non functional), please send it.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Regards,
> > > 
> > > -- 
> > > Sylvain
> > > 
> > > 
> > > On 2004.07.30 23:53 Guillaume Maillard wrote:
> > > >Hi,
> > > >
> > > >We are still waiting for a repository, don't forgot us!
> > > >The B.E.OS project, aka blueos still need a public cvs
> > > >to go further in the development.
> > > >
> > > >Regards,
> > 

-- 
Sylvain