Contact info

[Jeremy Allison]

On Wed, Nov 09, 2005 at 08:06:32AM -0800, william baroniunas wrote:
> Hello everyone.
> 
> I am trying to locate Francesco Ferrara who
> contributed a source module called crc32.c.
> 
> His copyright statement has me concerned that we do
> not have permission to freely distribute his software
> under the GPL.
> 
> His copyright simply states:
> 
> /* 
>  * Copyright  Francesco Ferrara, 1998  
>  * <francesco at aerra.it> 
>  *
>  * Used by kind permission, 14th October 1998. 
>  * http://www.aerre.it/francesco
>  *
> 
> What does 'used by kind permission' really mean?  I've
> been in contact with other legal folks who claim it is
> too vague. Whose permission is he referring to??
> 
> Is it broken english and he means 'please use freely
> with my permission?'  I would hope so but I am looking
> for more clarification.
> 
> If anyone has any idea how to reach him please let me
> know.  I would like to contact him in order to have
> him revise his copyright to something more GPL-like.

We have also tried to contact him to clarify with no
response as yet. I firmly believe that this code was given
to us under GPL-compatible terms, unfortunately the
person who received the code (Luke Leighton) has left
the Team and the email containing the approval was
in his personal email archives.

If we can't contact Francesco in a reasonable time
we'll simply replace the crc code (as there are only
5 lines of actual code there - the rest is a standard
crc table).

Jeremy.