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Date: Sun, 5 Feb 2012 09:11:08 +0400
From: Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com>
To: john-dev@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: copyright and license statements

On Sat, Feb 04, 2012 at 09:34:05PM -0500, jfoug@....net wrote:
> After getting a reply back from solar offlist, that he was waiting for my acceptance of this plan,

I was primarily referring to this newer posting:

http://www.openwall.com/lists/john-dev/2012/02/03/6

> ---- Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com> wrote: 
> > 1. Move your non-trivial contributions to separate (new) source files
> > such that you can unambiguously apply your copyright statement and our
> > standard permissive cut-down BSD license just to those.  Modify the
> > original file (such as rules.c) in trivial ways only - e.g., adding
> > calls into functions found in your new file.
> 
> The can be difficult.

Right.  magnum said so too.

> Take for instance mscash2.

This would not need to be used for mscash2_fmt_plug.c because this file
was never restricted by the GPL and we currently have no intent to add
such restrictions to its further revisions.

However, now that I looked at it, I see that you did not specify what
terms your changes are under.  I suggest that you use the same approach
that I proposed here:

http://www.openwall.com/lists/john-dev/2012/02/03/4

> > 2. Don't retain your copyright to your changes to shared files, but
> > instead transfer copyright either to me or to a legal entity that will
> > be the copyright holder for JtR - perhaps to Openwall, Inc.  IIRC, this
> > is the approach that e.g. the Nmap project is using (with copyright for
> > contributions transferred to Insecure.Com LLC).  You will continue to be
> > credited as an author of those files anyway, but not be a copyright
> > holder.  (Authorship and copyright are distinct things.)
> 
> This one, I am much more open to, and feel it should be easier to do.

I've since revised this proposal here:

http://www.openwall.com/lists/john-dev/2012/02/03/6

I guess you're open to that too?

> Could something like this be done with a blanket transfer statement, and then within source files, simply refer to that statement of transfer.

Yes, I'll see if I can do that (instead of statement of transfer, per my
new proposal we'll use a license with right to sublicense, though).

> I personally am not overly concerned about the copyright.  Credit for being author is all I have ever really wanted anyway.  The code I have produced for this project has been done so under my knowledge and consent that the ownership rights of the source was to be owned by the JtR project as a whole, in whatever way was necessary.

Thank you.  We just need to put this in a legally valid form.

Alexander

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