Re: License notices

[Peter Simons]

Bastiaan,

I think you may have misunderstood what I'm trying to do.
The @license keyword is a _temporary_ addition that has no
other purpose but to be replaced by a verbatim text license.
Once all macros have their correct @license assigned, I run
a tool which strips the @license tag and adds the
appropriate disclaimer instead, right at the top of the m4
source, exactly like it is in your macro.

After that, I say "cvs commit", @license is gone, and _all_
files have a correct disclaimer that looks alike everywhere
so that I can parse it reliably if I want to.

@license is not meant to be a permanent addition to the
format. The verbatim license is supposed to appear in the
sources in CVS as well as on the web site.

With that in mind, I'll reply to your posting:

 >> dnl @category InstalledPackages
 >> dnl @author Bastiaan Veelo <address@hidden>
 >> dnl @version 2005-01-24
 >> dnl @license AllPermissive
 >>
 >> dnl Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, Bastiaan Veelo
 >> dnl Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
 >> dnl are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
 >> dnl notice and this notice are preserved.
 >>
 >> dnl Calls BNV_PATH_QT_DIRECT (contained in this file) as a subroutine.
 >> AC_DEFUN([BNV_HAVE_QT],
 >> [

If you absolutely want your own text to be used rather than
the generated one, please remove the @license keyword
altogether from your macro so that you won't end up with two
license disclaimers in the source.


 > IMHO the @license line is redundant and slightly
 > misleading, but if it makes maintaining the archive more
 > fun, so be it.

No, it doesn't make maintaining the archive more fun. It
something I would have never done weren't it for all that
sudden noise here.

I see that people want it differently, so I'll do it. But
I'll do it the way _I_ want to do it, not the way Tom or any
of the other posters of the list want me to do it.


 > So far I thought Tom has been inserting the license text,
 > so why not let him decide what is easier?

Because we agreed on something else, because his spontaneous
decision to do otherwise would have essentially ruined the
transition plan I had, because that would have made all the
time and effort I put into writing the code for the
generation software that handles this transition a waste of
time.


 >> (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.

 > This is acceptable I think as long as it is in an
 > intermediate stage, somewhere off-line, and files are
 > equiped with a verbatim text before they go online.

I don't understand what you mean.

I assume, you still assume there would some repository of m4
files other than Savanah's CVS, and that this hidden
repository would still not contain licenses in verbatim. If
that is what you assumed, then let me rephrase my statement
from above a bit for clarity:

  (2) Once we know all @license tags are properly assigned,
  a tool can replace those tags in the file with the
  license's verbatim text automatically, and then it is
  _guaranteed_ that this text looks alike everywhere and
  that it can be recognized by software.

I use tools to maintain the archive _in CVS_. The HTML
generation is the least interesting part. Even sf.net could
get that developed. Wait, was than right? ;-)


 >> @license [optional keyword]
 >> verbose text

Multi-line keywords are a significant change to the format.
All keywords we support so far use a single line. Thus, the
format can be parsed by a line-parser (a.k.a. regex) rather
than requiring a full-blown recursive-descent parser or
other trickery. That's why I am against adding a multi-line
keyword, particularly one that we don't even need.


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

 > Let the tool do what? Generate copyright and license
 > notices in HTML? That is okay if you can. [...] But the
 > most important is that the m4 _source_ is licensed!

It is. Right now, there is a big, fat @license keyword;
which is more than we had for the last six years. (And more
than sf.net does.) And in two or three weeks the entire
problem is solved.


 >> [...] 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."

 > But everybody has to know that, otherwise they can not
 > copy, change or distribute...

Why not? Who is gonna sue them for copyright violation? You
won't, obviously, so who is gonna sue them?

Besides, if anyone wanted to use bnv_have_qt in some
high-profile commercial product and they weren't sure about
the exact licensing conditions ... then they'd have your
e-mail address. All this talk about how a 5 line macro in
the archive absolutely HAS to have a copyright statement and
licensing conditions spelled out in verbose is straight out
of a parallel universe for me.

Since he has been appealed to as an authority for the policy
of this archive, let me say that I admire Stallman. I admire
him for the kick-ass software he has written, and for the
software that came out of his project. I don't care much for
his more advanced political statements, though, because they
seem to have lost touch with reality. That's the drift I
catch in this discussion a lot, too.


 > I remember checking under which license the archive was
 > distributed before I considered submitting my macro to
 > you. [...] So you are wrong in assuming none of use ever
 > cared before.

Obviously I was. It appears that people put surprisingly
large amounts of emotion into legal disclaimers. Perhaps I
should have taken that more seriously.


 > I hope it is clear now!

So do I. ;-)

Peter