Introduction At the end of 2004, I received various flames and derogatory comments about the Autoconf Macro Archive from a handful of very vocal people, first and foremost Guido Draheim. The gist was that I was some sort of criminal because I distributed the macros without giving each and every single file a proper license attribution. With over 300 macros written by a hundred different authors, compiling that information was a massive task. The wonderful Tom Howard went through the effort of contacting every single author because of this problem; and based on the feedback we received, I edited the entire macro repository to carry proper license information. While I was at it, I also edited the contents of the site quite a bit for consistency. The process took several weeks. The only person who -- curiously enough -- had no time whatsoever to help in that process was the most vocal critic of the Autoconf Macro Archive -- said Guido Draheim. He complained quite loudly, but he contributed zilch. Eventually, however, the task was accomplished, and the Archive was in much better shape than it ever was before. Since I have always been a little frustrated with Guido's practice of releasing my work under his name, I posted the following article to the maintainers mailing list: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.sysutils.autoconf.archive-maintainers/542 I encouraged Guido to copy my entire repository over to ac-archive.sf.net, just like he had done for the last couple of years. He didn't dare to. He sort of announced that macro archives sucked and that he had better things to do with his life. Apparently that changed around September 27, 2006, because by then he had copied the entire contents of my site. Since he kind of neglected to mentioned this little fact anywhere in his release archive, I sent him an e-mail, but all I got back was a patronizing response that told me "to relax". In addition, he also threatened to complain to this public mailing list about my behavior. This lead me to respond to his e-mail in an open letter because I hope that a few impartial voices can help to disambiguate the situation for both of us. The release archive http://ac-archive.sourceforge.net/ac-archive-macros-2006.0927.tar.bz2 contains the entire distribution from <http://autoconf-archive.cryp.to/> in verbatim, but what it does not contain is a license disclaimer saying that I own the compilation copyright of this material and distribute it under the GPL. My license disclaimer has been removed. Lieber Guido, Dear Guido, die GPL erlaubt es Dir, meine Arbeit weiterzuverbreiten. Sie erlaubt es Dir aber nicht, das ohne Hinweis auf meine Urheberschaft zu tun. Deine unbearbeitete Weiterverbreitung meiner Distribution enthält weder mein README noch meine HTML-Start-Seite, noch irgendeinen anderen Hinweis darauf, woher Du geschätzte 95% des Materials beziehst, das Du unter Deinem Namen verbreitest. the GPL gives you the right to re-distribute my work; but it explicitly prohibits re-distribution without identifying the original copyright owner. Your release archive contains my entire macro collection in verbatim, but neither does it contain my README nor my HTML index page nor any other hint at the source of approximately 95% of the material you distribute under your own name. Es mag sein, daß Du das als "grundlegendes Wesen des Copylefts" empfindest. Ich empfinde die ungekennzeichnete Weiterverbreitung anderer Leute Arbeit unter eigenem Namen als Urheberrechtsverletzung. In an earlier e-mail you referred to this curious behavior as "the nature of copyleft". I refer to the act of re-distributing other people's efforts under your own name without mentioning them as a copyright infringement. Du schriebst: You wrote: > [Hey,] untersage mir einfach die Weiterverwendung der Makros, und ich nehme > die cryp.to Quelle einzweifix ganz heraus. Wenn es dich ruhiger schlafen > lässt, bitteschön. Die Weiterverwendung der Makros kann ich Dir nicht untersagen, da ich nicht Inhaber der Urheberrechte der Makros bin. Die Weiterverwendung meiner Distribution kann ich Dir nicht untersagen, weil ich sie unter GPL-Lizenz verbreite. Die Weiterverwendung meiner Distribution ohne Nennung des Urhebers untersage nicht ich Dir, die GPL tut das. I simply cannot forbid you to re-use the macros distributed by the Autoconf Macro Archive, as you suggest, because I don't own the copyright to these macros. I cannot forbid you to re-use my distribution either, because I publish that distribution under GPL. Re-distributing my efforts without identifying me as the original copyright owner is not something I forbid -- the GPL does. Unabhängig davon bitte ich Dich, meine Distribution NICHT weiterzuverbreiten. Bitte kehre in Deinem Repository auf den Stand zurück, auf dem Du warst, bevor Du meinen gesamten Inhalt kopiert hast. Ich beziehe mich dabei auf den Commit mit der Log-Meldung "start over": Regardless of this, I wish to take you up on your offer. Please do NOT re-distribute the macros found on my site. Please revert your repository back to the state in which it is was before you copied all my contents. I refer to the commit which says "start over": http://ac-archive.cvs.sourceforge.net/ac-archive/ac-archive-5/ac-archive/ Bitte nimm autoconf-archive.cryp.to als Quelle einzweifix heraus. Please do so at one fell swoop. [Shakespeare, Macbeth IV, 3, 219] > Natürlich mache ich den Umstand dann auf der Autoconf Mailing Liste > bekannt, nur damit sich niemand dort wundert. Ist nicht mehr notwendig. There is no more need to do that. Mit freundlichem Gruß With kind regards, Peter _______________________________________________ Autoconf mailing list Autoconf@xxxxxxx http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/autoconf
