the licence

the licence

[forsyth]

>>Generous I think might be stretching it. Although I meant this as a
>>joke, the agreement *could* be onerous.

the transitive closure clause seems generous to me; i'd not previously
seen anything like it in a licence agreement for commercial software.
indeed, i was astonished when i first read it.

the agreement is written (and this goes beyond discerning `intent', it's in the text) so
as to ensure that anything new you write remains yours, but anything they
wrote doesn't become yours (and even then, there's protection for you
if you have to adhere to an interface that means your code invariably
looks like some of their code elsewhere).

for instance, my Oberon front end is mine, mine, all mine.
if, however, i build a code generator for it by copy & change of either
the C or Alef code generators, i can't claim the latter as mine even if
i tinker with it.  if, however, i write from scratch a whizzy instruction
scheduler to go with it, and add calls to my code to their code, they

the licence

[pete.fenelon]

At 10:28 23/02/96 -0500, you wrote:
>
>> Imake is one of those things that save you a lot of time and effort. 
>> That is, the first time you see it, you promise yourself never to 
>> waste time and effort on it.
>> Nigel Roles
>
>Sort of like emacs... 
>
>(Sorry, couldn't resist.)
>

Grin. My first encounter with imake was when I was attempting to configure
InterViews, which in itself was another big WOMBAT (waste of money, brains
and time)!

pete
--
Peter Fenelon - Research Associate - High Integrity Systems Engineering Group,
Dep't of Computer Science, University of York, York, YO1 5DD (+44 1904 433388)
pete.fenelon@minster.york.ac.uk http://dcpu1.cs.york.ac.uk:6666/pete/pete.html

the licence

[Arnold]

> Imake is one of those things that save you a lot of time and effort. 
> That is, the first time you see it, you promise yourself never to 
> waste time and effort on it.
> Nigel Roles

Sort of like emacs... 

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Arnold Robbins		InfoGraphix (Star Imaging LLC, dba)
Phone: +1-404-523-4944	250 Williams Street, Suite 1120, Atlanta, GA 30303
Fax:   +1-404-523-4882	E-mail: arnold.robbins@infographix.com
"Oh! Look at all those zeros!" --- Chana Robbins, Age 3.5

the licence

[Boyd]

imake it harder?

the licence

[Boyd]

did somebody say 'object orientated perl'?

the only object i'd orientate it to is the window.

the licence

[forsyth]

>>Generous I think might be stretching it. Although I meant this as a
>>joke, the agreement *could* be onerous.

the transitive closure clause seems generous to me; i'd not previously
seen anything like it in a licence agreement for commercial software.
indeed, i was astonished when i first read it.

the agreement is written (and this goes beyond discerning `intent', it's in the text) so
as to ensure that anything new you write remains yours, but anything they
wrote doesn't become yours (and even then, there's protection for you
if you have to adhere to a system interface that means your code invariably
looks like some of their code elsewhere that also adheres to that interface).

for instance, my Oberon front end is mine, mine, all mine.  sod off.
if, however, i build code generators for it by copy & change of
the Plan 9 C or Alef code generators, i can't claim the latter as mine even if
i tinker with them.  if, however, i write from scratch a whizzy instruction
scheduler to go with it, and change their code to call my scheduler, they
don't acquire my scheduler.

having ownership be determined on whether your code is
``derived from [AT&T] code (in the copyright sense)''
seems equitable to me.

the licence

[forsyth]

>>If you can rewrite a code generator in less time than you can throw
>>out a set of makefiles for a smallish source tree and rewrite some
>>simple ones to replace them, then there's something wrong, and it's
>>not with Perl.

funnily enough, it turns out that i can really can write and debug
code generators in much less time than it takes me to work out what
a config script (not for Perl) is doing to do to a collection of Makefiles, and
what the Makefiles will do when i run them, given that the output
of `make -n' is a cascade of shell `if' statements
(and this is on Unix, not Plan 9).

the licence

[Nigel]

> >and even give up kittens, if i owned them, so as not to have to invoke one of
> >those wretched `configure' scripts ever again.
> 
> I'll bet you're a closet imake fan. :-)
> 

Imake is one of those things that save you a lot of time and effort. 
That is, the first time you see it, you promise yourself never to 
waste time and effort on it.
Nigel Roles

the licence

[Luther]

Please forgive my earlier posting in this same thread. I pulled the
same gaffe that someone else did earlier today and posted a personal
reply to 9fans. This wasn't meant to be a formal announcement of Perl
for Plan 9, which still has much, much testing to go before I foist it
on an unsuspecting public.

Humbly, 
Luther

the licence

[Greg]

lutherh@infinet.com (Luther Huffman, Jr.) writes:
> And the intent of the Plan 9 people is to provide source code to
> those who are interested. They've done a tremendous job at this,
> second to no one.

Would you like to qualify that statement?  I won't touch Plan 9
because there are plenty of operating systems with freely
redistributable source code for me to spend me time working on.

> The Perl configure script pure and simply won't run under Plan 9.

Perhaps this is simply a cost of Plan 9's attitude towards standards
conformance, rather than about Perl?  (Perl does have one of the
world's worst build procedures, but "its configure script doesn't run
under Plan 9" is not an argument against it, any more than "its
configure script doesn't run under DOS".)

(When I note that this is a cost of Plan 9's attitude towards
standards conformance, I do not mean to imply that there aren't also
benefits to that attitude.)

> Even though I'll have to completely rewrite the code generator and
> cross-compile from an entirely different platform because it
> bootstraps itself, the overall effort is much easier than the Perl
> interpreter.

If you can rewrite a code generator in less time than you can throw
out a set of makefiles for a smallish source tree and rewrite some
simple ones to replace them, then there's something wrong, and it's
not with Perl.

> Trying to create one distribution that can compile on all platforms
> escalates the complexity to the point that the code is unmanageable.

Certainly, which is why my software distributions won't support
nonstandard platforms which no one uses, like Plan 9.  (They will,
however, use Autoconf to support reasonable Unix platforms, and they
will remain quite manageable as a result.)

the licence

[Luther]

On Thu, 22 Feb 1996 19:08:12 -0500, you wrote:

Generous I think might be stretching it. Although I meant this as a
joke, the agreement *could* be onerous. But, as they say in legal
circles, the real meaning of an agreement is in the intent. And the
intent of the Plan 9 people is to provide source code to those who are
interested. They've done a tremendous job at this, second to no one.
   Certainly I would agree with you that I like the Plan 9 setup.
That's why I've invested a great deal of resources and effort into
supporting it.
   On a different note, bless your heart, I thought I was the only one
on earth to loath and despise Metaconfig, Configure and all of their
evil spawn. I'm the porter for Plan 9 Perl (the new object oriented
one). 95% of the perl-porters are in love with that blasted Configure.
It is the bane of my existence. The Perl configure script pure and
simply won't run under Plan 9. That means I have to edit a 30k,
ill-commented config.h header file by hand. I have no human-readable
makefile to document dependencies.
   Perl 5.002 is ready to hit the streets next week. Roughly 50 bugs
per day are being posted to the perl-porters mailing list. You may be
interested to know that perhaps 5 per week are core release bugs. The
rest deal with Configure, setup, and the like. 
   On the other hand, I'm also working on a Haskell compiler for Plan
9 (with luck it may be part of Brazil; I'm still working on buttering
up Howard Trickey, who has sold his soul to Standard ML). It currently
runs under NetBSD, uses plain old makefiles and no configure scripts.
Even though I'll have to completely rewrite the code generator and
cross-compile from an entirely different platform because it
bootstraps itself, the overall effort is much easier than the Perl
interpreter. Trying to create one distribution that can compile on all
platforms escalates the complexity to the point that the code is
unmanageable.

By the way, late tonight the Inferno team will post info about their
work on the home page late tonight, or so my mole on the team has
informed me.
>i was surprised by this comment, although i've heard it before.
>i suspect it is fast becoming a popular misconception.
>the Plan 9 licence certainly isn't a free for all,
>but seems to me to be a reasonable attempt at protecting each party's interests in
>an agreeable, equitable, and even generous manner.
>
>frankly, compared to the FSF offering, i'm willing to pay for Plan 9
>and even give up kittens, if i owned them, so as not to have to invoke one of
>those wretched `configure' scripts ever again.
>

the licence

[Paul]

>frankly, compared to the FSF offering, i'm willing to pay for Plan 9
>and even give up kittens, if i owned them, so as not to have to invoke one of
>those wretched `configure' scripts ever again.

I'll bet you're a closet imake fan. :-)

the licence

[forsyth]

>>Hmm. These wouldn't be the same lawyers who drew up the Plan 9
>>licensing agreement, would they? From my reading of the licensing
>>agreement, if my cat has kittens in the same room as my Plan 9
>>workstation the kittens belong to AT&T. =;-)

i was surprised by this comment, although i've heard it before.
i suspect it is fast becoming a popular misconception.
the Plan 9 licence certainly isn't a free for all,
but seems to me to be a reasonable attempt at protecting each party's interests in
an agreeable, equitable, and even generous manner.

frankly, compared to the FSF offering, i'm willing to pay for Plan 9
and even give up kittens, if i owned them, so as not to have to invoke one of
those wretched `configure' scripts ever again.