tomsrtbt, 3rd draft...

[Tom Oehser]

The point is, tomsrtbt consists of some things under the GPL, some things
under BSD-derivatives, some things under LGPL, some things under other
licenses, and some things I have complete rights to.  I think is is just
as clear and definite to say "You must credit where you got this, with the
exception of parts where I can't say that" as it would be to list every
single program and figure out what I can or can't require for each one.

> >  But I can 
> > *ABSOLUTELY* make it clear that this is my desire, want, and 
> > expectation, to the fullest extent legally available to me.
 
> Which, under the GPL, is nil, unless you can find a law requiring
> attribution. Don't pretend that this "desire, want, and expectation"
> is part of the license, though. IANAL.

I have nil rights to REQUIRE that GPL programs copied from my diskette
give credit.  I can certainly *desire* it, *want* it, (redundant, I know),
and *expect* it, and I can certainly put in the license that I will be
mightily peeved if it isn't done, though of course explicitely without
any common law recourse.  In other words, I can politely or otherwise
*request* it.  I have no intention of mis characterizing anything or of
confusing anyone, that is why I'm working on it in this forum.

It is worth pointing out, by the way, that anyone grabbing binaries off
of a mini distribution and re-distributing them is likely to end up in
violation of various licenses, anyway, but as far as I can tell I am not
*required* to *enforce* that people down the line follow them.  In all
bluntness, the point of what I'm trying to say is that I don't personally
care if they don't get the source for libc5 from me (or elsewhere, it is
not, for common sense sake, as though vanilla libc5 source is exactly hard
to come by) and make it available, and I don't personally care that they
havn't actually built it from source, and are distributing a binary that
as far as *they* know is full of trojans.  Obviously, if they don't compile
the stuff on their product themselves, they don't know *what* they have.

But, the thing is, I am *not* complaining about their use of a bag of
binaries from my distribution, even though they are probably in violation
of various licenses by doing so.  I just want them, no matter *how* or
*what* they do, to mention where they got the binaries.  It is insane
not to do so, if only that those using those distributions should know
where the stuff came from.

Anyway, is the following clear and is it compatable?

*******************************************************************************
* This copyright in no way supercedes or nullifies any copyrights or licenses *
* of the component parts, such as the BSD and GPL copyrights which cover many *
* of the programs, which confer specific rights and responsibilies which MUST *
* be met in order to use this package and which prohibit certain restrictions *
* to the programs. It covers the work as a whole and any components which may *
* be so protected. For those components to which these restrictions cannot be *
* applied, (i.e. under the GPL), construe the term "MUST" as "PRETTY PLEASE". *
* You MUST credit tomsrtbt, mention http://www.toms.net/rb/ and Tom at Toms.NET, *
* and include this entire notice verbatim. Copyright Tom Oehser, 2001. Within *
* these strictures you may freely redistribute, incorporate, copy, modify, or *
* do anything else to it or with it that you like. Tomsrtbt has no warranties *
* not even implied fitness or usefulness.  If it breaks you keep both pieces. *
*******************************************************************************

  -Tom