Re: mib2c - license question

On Tue, 2005-11-29 at 10:18 -0800, Wes Hardaker wrote:
> >>>>> On Tue, 15 Nov 2005 18:14:05 +0100 (CET), Barbara Kuriata <kbe_bael@yahoo.pl> said:
>
> Barbara> I have a question about copyright of the code generated by
> Barbara> the mib2c tool. I know that the existing net-snmp code is
> Barbara> protected by the BSD like license (like it is explained in
> Barbara> COPYING file distributed with net-snmp package). But what
> Barbara> about new code, that I generate from my MIB using mib2c tool
> Barbara> and then modify it. Is it also under the BSD license or can I
> Barbara> use my own copyright?
>
> I'm not a lawyer. But since the code that is being produced is
> copyright by BSD in the "code definition files" that would mean that
> the output was also copyright by the same copyright statement, which
> is BSD. However, if you modify it then you can add your own copyright
> to it but you can't remove the BSD part.

Hmmm....
I'm not totally convinced about this.
For a couple of reasons:

a) I could fire up a text editor, and generate exactly
the same code manually without ever using 'mib2c'.
That presumably wouldn't be subject to any automatic
licensing conditions.

b) The code that is generated by 'mib2c' doesn't
include any licensing statements or comments,
so there doesn't seem to be a "BSD part" to remove.

c) Assorted GNU code generation tools (such as gcc,
bison, etc) don't typically apply the GPL license
to the resulting code. By analogy, the output of
mib2c would most naturally be unaffected by the
licensing of mib2c itself.

But I am not a lawyer either, and have often been wrong
w.r.t. such things.

Dave


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