A burning issue ... is resolved!

[Seddigh%vermithrax.sch.symbolics.com@RELAY.CS.NET, SLUG-liaison%vermithrax.sch.symbolics.com@RELAY.CS.NET]

I am pleased to announce the first patch exchange policy for Symbolics
users and licensees. This policy pertains to patches made to Symbolics
software by users, and is effective immediately.

A while back Mr. Brad Miller sent me mail suggesting that Symbolics
users should be able to exchange user created patches to Symbolics
software among themselves.  Mr. Paul Pangaro then requested that
Symbolics formally address this issue as one that is of interest to SLUG
and the user community in general. At the time, no formal guidelines
existed to permit the exchange of such patches and fixes, and
implications of the users' licensing agreements had not been
articulated. 

Many special thanks to Mr. Howard Cannon (Vice President, Symbolics
Marketing) and Mr. Stephen Korn (General Counsel for Symbolics) for
taking the time to formulate the relevant guidelines.

Text of the guidelines follows verbatim. Background mail on the issue
follows next.  We hope Symbolics customers will enjoy the enhanced
technical and professional communication afforded by this policy, and
that they will use it to obtain even more productivity from their
Symbolics systems.

Please note that SLUG may act as an intermediary in the distribution of
patches as specified.


Regards,

Reza Seddigh
SLUG-liaison

						
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1    Distribution of System Modifications and Patches

2Here are the guidelines for the distribution of modified sources and
binaries between Symbolics' licensees. Any binary licensee of a version
of any item of Symbolics software may freely distribute modified binary
copies (in whole or in part) of that software to any other binary
licensee of the same version of such software. Any source licensee of
a version of any item of Symbolics software may freely distribute
modified source (or binary) copies (in whole or in part) of that
software to any other source licensee of the same version of such
software.0 2Any source licensee of any item of Symbolics software may
distribute modified binary copies of that software to any other binary
licensee of the same version of that software. SLUG may act as an
intermediary in any of these distributions.  It is the responsibility of all
licensees to ensure that their modified software is distributed only to a
party who has a license to use the binary or source code, as the case
may be, of the version of Symbolics software for which modifications
have been created.

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Background mail:

From: Brad Miller <miller@ACORN.CS.ROCHESTER.EDU>
Subject: A burning issue
To: slug-liaison@RIVERSIDE.SCRC
cc: slug@WARBUCKS.AI.SRI

Here's what I consider a burning customer issue, (though from one man's
perspective...)

Customers should be allowed to send patches to symbolics code back and forth
to each-other DIRECTLY. This is particularly the case if site A fixes some
problem Q, and cannot send a patch to site B with same problem because it
violates the source licence.

In general, it should be permissable for sites to swap source versions if
they both have source licences for the same release.