On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 4:45 PM, Chiradeep Vittal <chiradeep.vit...@citrix.com> wrote: > > > On 9/12/12 12:42 PM, "Chip Childers" <chip.child...@sungard.com> wrote: > >>Hi all, >> >>(Looking for mentor guidance here as well please!) >> >>On this topic, we need to come together as a community to figure out >>how we want to proceed with these configuration files. It doesn't >>seem like we are going to get a definitive answer on legal-discuss@a.o >>without asking about a specific file from a specific source. There >>HAS been a little discussion about the ability of a configuration file >>to be copyright on the legal list, but it didn't go much further than >>a couple of emails. >> >>As far as I can tell, we have some options: >> >>1 - Do a file by file audit to confirm the source and if there is any >>claim of copyright on those files, and then either: >>1.A - Ask the source project if they would consider granting a >>different license for just that config file. >>1.B - Ask legal-discuss@a.o for specific exemptions >>1.C - Do nothing, because the file isn't something that a copyright is >>claimed on (and we wouldn't claim a copyright either) >>1.D - Spec out the requirements, and have someone attempt a clean-room >>implementation (I think that I could find someone if it gets to this) >>2 - Follow up on the concept of configuration files not being >>protected by copyright, and ask for a ruling from legal-discuss on >>that idea. >> >>There may be other options that I'm missing. I'm looking for opinions >>and suggestions for how to move forward, since this is absolutely one >>of the blocker issues for a 4.0 release. Thoughts? >> >>-chip > > I am inclined to do 1.C. There are other OSS projects that contain > configuration files: > For example the HAProxy cookbook template for Chef [1] is very similar to > the config file > in CloudStack [2] > > [1] > https://github.com/opscode-cookbooks/haproxy/blob/master/templates/default/ > haproxy.cfg.erb > > [2] http://s.apache.org/8KI > >
Just to be clear, for 1.C, I was assuming that it was only an option for a specific file that we were able to prove was not copyrighted by someone or something (proj, corp, etc...).
