[Celinux-dev] Reverse Engineering and the new CELF Wiki

[Paul Mundt]

On Thu, Oct 26, 2006 at 04:02:17PM -0400, Bill Traynor wrote:
> In my travels in webland as well as through various conversations with
> embedded developers, a concern has come concerning work (research)
> involving reverse engineering and it's inclusion on the new CELF Wiki.
> 
Calling it the "new CELF Wiki" is rather misleading, and I think that's
where most of the confusion on this topic is coming from. The wiki is
embedded linux targetted, and neutral. There will be CELF content
migrated, and a note that it's sponsored and supported by CELF, but this
is not an attempt to recreate the CELF public wiki under a different
name.

> Concerns include:
> 
> 1.  Why would I post my Linux work on a site sponsored by companies
> who would prefer I didn't reverse engineer their devices?
> 
This is a neutral location, so as long as the data is not an issue
legally, then it can be posted. It's up to the submitter to understand
the legal issues with regards to the content they are posting,
particularly if it's going to draw attention from specific companies.
Posting to the wiki does not absolve one of liability, nor should it.
People need to think about what they're posting.

As it's a neutral location, no single sponsoring company will have a
direct impact on determining "allowable" content.

> 2.  If I create content on the new CELF Wiki, what's stopping CELF
> from suddenly switching to a members only model, where only CELF
> members can access content?
> 
All of the content is available under the GFDL or GPLv2, even if CELF
were to attempt to assert control and lock down the wiki, despite being
rather pointless, given that there's already a members-only wiki, all of
the content can be forked off and placed elsewhere.

> As many of you know, some innovative work typically comes from
> 'hackers' messing around in their basements.  So how do I allay their
> fears and get them to contribute?
> 
If people wish to contribute, they are fairly able to do so. It's really
not worth pandering to the paranoid crowd regardless of what they have to
contribute. If someone is concerned about a vendor neutral organization
asserting control over content under an open license, there's not much
you can say to rationalize.

On Mon, Oct 30, 2006 at 04:39:13PM -0600, Scott E. Preece wrote:
> Of course, we can't prove anything to anyone, but we can have the policy
> statement make our intent clear.
> 
Indeed, all of these things should be covered in the policy statement.

> For these two questions, that should probably include saying that the
> editors reserve the right to remove material that is offensive, illegal,
> or infringes copyrighted material,  that the site is bound by CELF's IP
> rules and not subject to control by any individual company, and that
> while material is licensed to the site by the author (under the GPL and
> GFDL, if that's where we ended up), the author retains ownership and the
> ability to use or license it elsewhere.
> 
I agree with most of this, though it should be clear that the CELF IP
rules apply to the members, not the contributors. We do not want to drive
this as another version of the CELF public wiki. The basic boilerplate
restrictions on infringing material seem good enough to me, we don't want
to get in to IP ownership assertions and transference of liability.