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

[Scott E. Preece]

Yup. The reference to the IP rules was going to the part that says we
accept contributions with no promise of confidentiality, but I agree
with Paul on this.

scott

| From: Paul Mundt<lethal at linux-sh.org>
| 
| 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.
| 

-- 
scott preece
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