Re: How to deal with GPL paper when the contributer can not contact with?

[Stefan Monnier]

>      When I move ivy-posframe (https://github.com/tumashu/ivy-posframe) to 
> gnu-elpa,  
> I can not contact with a contributer , and I do not know his GPL paper status.
>
> 1. his patchs: https://github.com/tumashu/ivy-posframe/commits?author=noctuid
> 2. The length of his patchs is  > 15 lines.

Indeed, looking at those patches makes it sound like they're not quite
trivial enough.

I've also sometimes found it difficult to get in touch with some people.
Filing an issue in their repository is an alternative way to contact
them (which I have never tried, tho, because I prefer to keep my github
use to a minimum).

> 2.  his patchs are rewrite ivy.el and swiper.el's exist functions, so many
> code of his patch come from  ivy.el and swiper.el,  ivy.el and swiper.el are
> gnu-elpa packages.

Maybe if you decompose his patches into "copy code from gnu-elpa" (his
copyright doesn't apply to this) and then "modify that new code"
(copyright does apply to that), the end result is simple enough to pass
the "15 lines or so" test.

Then again, copying code is better avoided, so maybe you can rewrite his
changes in such a way that they make use of (i.e. share code with)
ivy/swiper code rather than copying it.  That would circumvent the
problem and improve the code at the same time.


        Stefan