Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Conflicts in .arch-ids

[James Blackwell]

Catalin Marinas:
>> A good start would be a public Linux mainline BK->arch gateway (one way)
>> but this probably cannot be achieved with the free BK because of its
>> license,

BK's license prevents developers of other revision control systems from
writing a BK->arch gateway without purchasing a license (about $2k
IIRC). As such, Tom Lord, Robert Collins, Aaron Bentley and myself can
not legally work on such a gateway unless a couple thousand dollars is
forked over (per person).

What's more, the clause is rather ambigious, so its potentially possible
that anybody that wrote a BK->Arch gateway could be considered as
"working on arch".

So what to do, what to do? Larry McVoy, speaking as the CEO of BitMovers
Inc, has said that anybody that wants to perform this work can license a
copy of bitkeeper.

So I'll ask this... is there anybody that, if a licensed copy of
bitkeeper were provided to them, has the time, the inclination
and the credentials to work on a BK->Arch gateway? 

>
Robert Green wrote:
> Cannot be achieved legally, maybe. But if someone were to release such a
> gateway anonymously via a friend, and took care not to protect their anonym=
> ity,
> I don't see what BitMover could do about it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but a
> product made using information obtained by breaking the license would not
> itself be illegal, right?
>
> Since such so-called "piracy" is solely for the purposes of interoperabilit=
> y,
> and doesn't fund drugs or terrorism, I personally don't have a moral problem
> with it.
>
> Besides, the anti-competitive clause might be unenforceable in some
> jurisdictions. If, say, it was unenforceable in Japan, a developer in Japan
> could develop the gateway and no-one could be sued for using the gateway.
> I know of no intellectual property statute that restricts products that are
> based on information which _happened_ to be obtained illegally, but is
> available to anyone who can afford to pay, legally. In any case, by hypothe=
> sis,
> the information would _not_ have been obtained illegally in the scenario I =
> just
> described.
>
> IANAL, etc.
>
> --=20
> Robin
>
> Weblog: http://lrp.greenrd.org/
>
> --d6Gm4EdcadzBjdND
> Content-Type: application/pgp-signature
> Content-Disposition: inline
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux)
>
> iD8DBQFBIeKutPCt67UksSYRAq0UAJwIfNAnkmWbpK7wcxz2IytSJhyZcwCff5wy
> NUQ0ySkYUuo9mLd6eaLLhMk=
> =h5vh
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
> --d6Gm4EdcadzBjdND--
>
>
>
> --===============0967316711==
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
> Content-Disposition: inline
>
> _______________________________________________
> Gnu-arch-users mailing list
> address@hidden
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-arch-users
>
> GNU arch home page:
> http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/gnu-arch/
> --===============0967316711==--
>
>


-- 
James Blackwell          Try something fun: For the next 24 hours, give
Smile more!              each person you meet a compliment!

GnuPG (ID 06357400) AAE4 8C76 58DA 5902 761D  247A 8A55 DA73 0635 7400