Re: News about the macro archive

[Peter Simons]

Bastiaan Veelo writes:

 >> @license AllPermissive

 > If you are worried about duplication of the license, why
 > not test for the text that Tom has been inserting?

Perhaps it's a cultural thing. Us Germans, you know, love
efficiency. It's in our genome. ;-) So when I look at the
problem, I see this:

 (1) "@license AllPermissive" is easier to insert correctly
     (so that it is recognized reliably) than a multi-line
     verbatim text license is.

 (2) Once we know all @license tags are properly assigned, a
     tool can insert the multi-line, verbatim text
     automatically, and then it is _guaranteed_ that this
     text looks alike everywhere and that it can be
     recognized by software.

 (3) The tool will also handle "@license GPL2", "@license
     GPLWithACException", and "@license BSD" in the same
     run.

 (4) The tool will also add the proper "Copyright (c) <date>
     <author>" lines automatically, which is much harder to
     get right manually.

All this tells me: Shit, why bother? Let the tool do it!

For the tool to do its job correctly, the markup

  dnl @author Bastiaan Veelo <address@hidden>
  dnl @version 2005-01-15
  dnl @license AllPermissive

is just, well, better than

  dnl Copyright (C) 2005 by Bastiaan Veelo <address@hidden>.
  dnl Copying and distribution of this file, with or without
  dnl modification, are permitted in any medium without royalty
  dnl provided the copyright notice and this notice are preserved.

is. Compare with point (1).

I think it's pretty obvious actually. ;-)


 > Every file _has to have_ a verbose license statement,
 > original files as well as any generated files.

I guess this is the core of the problem, this shows where we
really disagree. I think it's perfectly irrelevant whether a
file has a verbose license statement or not. Personally, I
think it's insane to say "I don't give a shit what you do
with this software", and then to insert lines of lines of
redundant disclaimers that say "Yeah, I really don't care
what you do with this software. And under no circumstances
must you remove this statement so that everybody knows I
don't care. Go figure."

I think it's contradictory.

I remember the times when thousands of programs where shared
and developed around the planet and all that anyone ever
cared about legalese was "This is in the public domain." and
that was it. And this is how the archive was run for the
last six years. No file ever had a license disclaimer, but
that didn't keep people from submitting 300+ macros to it.
And it didn't keep any of you guys from contributing either.

That's why I wonder what all the fuzz is about.

Peter