Re: Distribution terms

[Zoltan Hidvegi <hzoli@cs.elte.hu>]

> }   Do you, Zoltan, or does anyone else know where I can find explicit
> } distribution terms for Zsh.  I've looked the usual places, and not found
> } any information.  I'm asking permission of the FSF to use the bit of
> } color_ls in zsh, but we need to let them know the distribution policy.
> 
> Before you go through that hassle, perhaps we should have (a) a statement
> from Zoltan on whether he thinks the patches are worth including in the
> first place, and (b) a discussion on zsh-workers about that statement.

As Richard wrote the copyright policy can be found in each C source file.
I'll extract it to a separate COPYING file and add that that copiright
notice holds for all included file except where there is a different
copyright note in the file (i.e. COPYING will say that zsh is copyrighted
by P.F. but Makefiles, configure.in etc. are copyrighted by Richard.  I do
not know who copyrights the texinfo documentation.  It comes mostly from
the manual so PF maybe.  I do not know anything about copyright law.  If
one expert could write a good COPYING file based on the comments in C files
and the general ideas above I would happily include it in the distribution.

And about colorizes lists: first there will be a zsh-3.0.1 release.  It
will definitely not be added before that.  And in zsh-3.1 we have to find
out a portable way to use dynamically loadable modules.  After that anyone
can write a plug-in for zsh and can implement any feature he wants.  But
such features should not blow up zsh.  It would be a good idea to better
modularise the existing zsh code, make a few things optional (fo rexample
zle and completion).  I do not know how much is the ovehead caused by a big
executable.  When zsh is used as a scipt interpreter on a demand-paged
system only the parts necessary run a script will be loaded so it may not
give any real improvement.

Zoltan