So this may need to pop off to -legal soon :). And IANAL ... but... On 23 December 2013 17:35, Chet Burgess <[email protected]> wrote: > It's unclear to me what exactly constitutes writing a new patch. I can check > out oslo.messaging, and without trying to merge the patch just go and make > the same change (its literarily a 2 line change). I can write the tests, and > I can submit it (which I'm happy to do, I really want this bug fixed). > Honestly though this change is so trivial I don't see how my patch would > look all that different from the one already posted. I know there is prior > art. The mixin class that kombu provides does the exact same thing. Is that
Prior art is a patent concept, not related to copyright. Copyright is entirely about copying. If you haven't read the patch, sit down with the source code and the bug, and write up a new patch, any resemblance or lack of resemblance is irrelevant. If you *have* read the patch, and sit down to do the same thing, it becomes possible for questions to be raised about whether you copied the patch or not - particularly if the patch you create does end up looking the same. But - I don't think OpenStack needs to be a moral compass here - honour the CLA when you make a contribution, enough said. > sufficient? What else would need to be done to make this free an clear for > our use? I'm going to try reaching out to the author to see if I can sort it > that way, but this still seems like there is a general problem here. My advice, if you have concerns: - don't read patches on the bug tracker - perhaps even delete them - patches should be in Gerrit. > Given the current interpretation of the IP laws someone has an effective way > to block progress on a feature, blueprint, or project as a whole. Create a > launchpad account, don't sign the CLA, just start posting implementations to > launchpad. If the simple act of reading the bugs now encumbers us from being I don't think it's that simple. > able to fix them in a certain way or using certain patterns we have a Copyright != Patents. Patents describe processes - patterns. Copyright is on the actual work + various transformations of it. A patch with an implementation of linked lists would not stop us using linked lists no matter how many folk read it ;) > potentially serious issue. If this is really the case should we not lock the > bug tracker to only those who have signed the CLA or have the TOU clearly > state that any code posted is automatically ASLv2? Am I misunderstanding the > scope of this problem? I think you're over estimating the risk. It's often entirely possible to read a patch and then write a de novo patch yourself. -Rob -- Robert Collins <[email protected]> Distinguished Technologist HP Converged Cloud _______________________________________________ OpenStack-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
