Do we need one of those on our docs?
Shachar Shemesh
wine-devel at shemesh.biz
Mon Nov 8 02:10:46 CST 2004
From the samba developer's guide, http://us1.samba.org/samba/devel/
> *Important:* In order to avoid any potential licensing issues we
> also ask that anyone who has signed the Microsoft CIFS Royalty
> Free Agreement
> <http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cifs/protocol/royalty-free_cifs_technical_reference_license_agreement.asp>
> not submit patches to Samba, nor base patches on the referenced
> specification. We ask, too, that patches submitted to Samba not
> infringe on any known patents. Finally, as with all GPL work, the
> submitter should ensure that submitted patches do not conflict
> with any third-party copyright.
>
>
Do we need to put in something like that too?
I'm not a lawyer (but I can probably get one). My understanding is that
the "protocols" Microsoft policy don't really affect us. What may affect
us is the wider and wider distribution of the Windows source code
(Shared Source). We should not be highly affected by trade secrets:
anyone publishing a trade secret is nullifying the secretness of it, and
is the one bearing the responsibility for this action. However,
copyright problems may be a problem for us. If someone takes a
significant amount of code from MS and submits it, we may have some
backtracking to do.
Shachar
--
Shachar Shemesh
Lingnu Open Source Consulting ltd.
http://www.lingnu.com/
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