Re: cmp: the port comparison server

[olafBuddenhagen]

Hi,

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 01:49:02PM +0200, Carl Fredrik Hammar wrote:

> I've been making some progress code-wise with libmob.  In particular I
> have written a working server for secure comparison of ports.

Actually, I'm not sure where the comparision server fits in, in view of
certain conclusions from the recent IRC discussions?...

> The plan is for libmob to be part of the Hurd eventually, but I think
> its best for it to have a standalone repository, as oppose to a clone
> of Hurd's, until we reach a point where we can port existing
> translators to use libmob.

Why?

> Mostly so that I don't feel the need to follow commit conventions and
> such, and continue to just ``go for it''.

As long as you consider you branch to be inofficial, you can do whatever
you want -- it really doesn't matter whether you branched it from the
Hurd repository, or build it standalone. The former is more convenient
though IMHO.

> For now I use 1234000 as the subsystem number.

I'm not sure what numbers new subsystems should use. It seems that the
existing subsystems are below 100000, where a reserved range begins.
(For ioctls IIRC.) I guess new subsystems should go below the reserved
range, though technically putting them above the end of the reserved
range probably also works...

> In the copyright notices I state that the program is part of the Hurd
> and that the copyright is assigned to FSF.  But technically it isn't
> part of the Hurd yet, I hope this isn't a problem.

Should be fine I believe. As you declared it part of the Hurd yourself,
your copyright assignment should apply I'd say.

> I based the translator on password originally, since it also is a
> trivial translator whose main interface isn't IO.  So currently I
> state this as well in the relevant copyright notices.  But this code
> is similar to a lot of other trivfs translators, has diverged, and it
> is only a small portion of the actual functionality.  With that in
> mind is it really necessary to state that in the copyright?  (It is
> also based on auth, but here I believe attribution is in order.)

As the copyright holder is the same, it's not really necessary to state
where the code came from at all.

(Most of the translators in the Hurd repo actually are obviously based
on other ones, but don't state so explicitely.)

-antrik-