All,
On 20.05.2016 20:22, David Cramblett wrote:
> I think it's more the general idea of this situation is common. My
> employer uses BackupPC as well, and much of my work would be on company
> time - although I work for a government agency. So not necessarily
> singling you out, just the situation your in. I think it's a common
> situation.

Sorry, but I think there is a misunderstanding here. What I said is,
under some jurisdictions, a contributor can not transfer his or her
copyright unless she or he is paid to do the work.

Have a look at the source of the Linux kernel: Vast parts of the code
are copyright by Intel, AMD, ARM, Broadcom and so on.

But all of the code is licensed under the GPLv2. And this means that
those companies have agreed to distribute their code under the rules the
GPLv2 defines. But this also means that they want to retain the rights
on their code. They want to be able to sue anyone who takes their code
and redistributes it under a non compatible license (or even closed
source). This is the copyrights holders right (and plight).

A rather interesting read is
http://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/2046/how-can-the-linux-kernels-main-c-file-say-that-one-of-its-copyrights-is-all-ri
for example.

There have been mentions of the infamous SCO trials. But there, the
situation is different: SCO claims that vast amounts of their code has
been lifted and transplanted in to the Linux kernel. And such claims can
be made by anyone, against any project. This is just lawyers having a
blast and investors gambling.

Another issue that may creep up in this regard are patents. I'm quite
sure that somewhere, some "ingenious" guy has patented "a method to
backup a computer" or "a method to reduce backup footprints by pooling
the files/blocks". There is no real defence against this, other than not
having an entity responsible for the project that could be sued. And if
it happens regardless, move to project to a country where software
patents do not exist.

I feel that this whole discussion is pointless and a real time sink. All
the effort going into this discussion would better be spent by working
on BackupPC and the infrastructure to support it. All I wanted to say is
that CDAs may not be legally possible for all contributors and that it
would require some institution which may have to be tightly controlled
in order to mitigate the risk of loosing the control over the project.

And I'm still not a lawyer.

Therefore, I will refrain from participating in this discussion from now on.

With kind regards

Stefan Peter



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