On Wed, 2013-02-13 at 09:29 +0000, Ivan Shmakov wrote: > >>>>> Svante Signell <svante.sign...@gmail.com> writes: > >>>>> On Wed, 2013-02-13 at 09:07 +0100, Richard Braun wrote: > >>>>> On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 06:51:29AM +0100, Svante Signell wrote: > > […] > > >>> - you cannot commit this code unless I agree to sign the copyright > >>> papers for libc (which I of course will when asked for). This is a > >>> derived work of mine. Otherwise it has to stay as a Debian patch. > > >> Really ? That's what you choose to say here ? Have you at least > >> looked at the changes he made ? They're really not much like what > >> you've sent us. > > > I know, but it's still a derived work from my efforts. If I hadn't > > worked on this, the current state wouldn't be as it is now. > > It seems like a common misconception that even the “paid > professionals” sometimes fall into. The point is, however, that > the copyright law is concerned with /representations/ (i. e., > code, in this case), not /ideas/ (algorithms, etc.)
You couldn't call it a clean-room implementation though. All necessary information was available (on request) from the original submitter to the person doing the rewrite. > Clearly, without Unix being available, GNU wouldn't exist. This > doesn't make the latter fall under the copyright of the former. > .. > PS. Note, however, that I haven't reviewed the code being discussed, > and thus have no opinion on whether any of the Svante's code has > made its way (perhaps with trivial modifications) into the > Samuel's patch, or not. No big deal really, the goal was the same, to increase the POSIX level for Hurd :-)
