Rugxulo wrote:
No, it's not. Any of those licenses or definitions would be sufficient here. Even a very simple all-premissive non-copyleft release or public domain would do.
How so? Only if GPLv3 compatible!
OK, indeed, to use in GPC it would also have to be GPL compatible. But most free licenses, and especially PD, are, unless the authors added explicit clauses to prevent this.
Have you ever been sued by a big company, demanding millions and threatening to destroy what you spent your last few years working on, in a court case that extends over many years?
No, and I don't have millions (or thousands), so I'm not that worried! I don't want to say we shouldn't try to clarify, but we shouldn't go insane because xyz (informally) said abc instead of (explicitly / legally) AbC.
OK, you don't have millions. Me neither. ;-) But I suppose some of the companies that use GPC do (for a medium-sized company, millions in assets is not really much, you know -- but losing millions is often fatal). Do you think we should put them at risk just because you personally don't worry?
Anyways, Scott said Pemberton was well aware of his efforts but stopped responding to his emails.
What an argument. Since Scott now stopped responding to our emails, does this mean we can use his works (including IP Pascal) as if they were public domain? (Just kidding, of course.)
IP isn't open source and was never declared as "public domain".
Neither was P4 (by its authors/owners) for all we know so far.
A copyright holder has no obligation to explain himself or argue with you. In fact, they don't have to do anything, not to register the works or even put an explicit copyright notice on it. As long as they don't explicitly release it, the copyright stands (until it expires in many decades).
I'll admit that the term "public domain" has sometimes been misused, but I don't think so here. It (P4) is only like 4000+1500 lines (5500), nothing huge.
That's about 1000 times (wild guess) as large as required for copyright protection.
If we were going to use it, it wouldn't be a dead case (anymore).
I'd rather you ask FPC about whether they are (or will adapt to) GPLv3 (compatible).
Huh? What's that got to do with it? (As Jonas wrote, it is compatible, but even if it weren't, what would this mean in this context? Are you again bringing up random examples of random things?)
: "He responded derisively, stating that the university was free but : the compiler was not," recalls Stallman. "I therefore decided that : my first program for the GNU Project would be a multi-language, : multi-platform compiler."
So why hasn't the backend been kept up to date?
Up to date with what?
I think you're confusing the problem that the GPC frontend hasn't been kept up to date with the backend.
Are the GCC devs just ultra busy or anti-Pascal or ...? (Doubt it, but ....) Why is it so hard?? Lemme guess, RMS doesn't use Pascal.
No, AFAIK he doesn't. And he's under no obligation (neither other backend developers) to care about Pascal, just as little as we are to care about Fortran. Each language frontend is developed by those who care about it. We can blame the backend developers for (sometimes unwarranted) major API changes and lack of cooperation, but not for not doing our work.
P5 might not be a big deal (depending on your definition), but a (hypothetical) new GPC project would be. And this makes it a particularly bad deal to use P5 as a basis -- it doesn't help much (not a big deal, in your words), but it can hurt very much (since a legal threat would threaten the whole project). In fact, the opposite situation (using a large program of questionable copyright and doing some small modifications) is much less risky -- even if not legally sound, you don't stand to lose as much. So, unintentionally, you give a very good argument for my side. :-)
Bah, then make a plugin system, a la GCC 4.5.0, and use P5 in that. ;-))
This would still put the frontend (i.e., all of our work) at risk.
Clearly Scott (who is clearly intelligent) thinks P5 is worthwhile.
And yet he didn't base his own compiler (IP Pascal) on P5. "That should tell you something."
Yeah, that P5 didn't exist then!
OK, P4 then. Try again.
The point is if Scott was sure that Pascal-P (whichever version) is public domain and he considers it worthwhile, he could have used it for his own compiler, even is that one is proprietary and commercial, instead of reimplementing it.
"Hmmm, I might be able to get $10000000 from <some company that uses GPC for mission critical software>! Sue him, screw him!"
FTFY.
At least one now has two avenues to pursue the matter when interested:
- Contact Steven Pemberton and ask him if he has a documented statment of its being PD
Legal papers?? From whom? Why would he?
Because he's stating that it's PD on his website and he wrote a book about it. (Not saying he's required to have such papers, but he might since he obviously spend some time of his life with it.)
What if he lost it?
Then try the second alternative. (It didn't say they were guaranteed to work, just possibilities.)
What if there is (or was) no "legal" way for it to be declared PD even if the authors' intended that??
Which I suppose. Then all we could hope for is release under some free (possibly all-permissive) license. In which case PD would be legally incorrect, but for practial purposes close enough.
Gah, I guess I should just e-mail him, but as you know, that never gets anywhere. *sigh*
Such is the tedious work usually required in issues that go back many years. I'm afraid, I can't change it, but at least the occasional success feels sweet then.
or if he used the term in an informal way, much as you do, meaning the copyright is currently not actively enforced; note that I'm not even sure if active releasing to PD is even possible under relevant laws -- it's not in many European countries -- though it could have been released under an "all-permissive" license, which effectively works quite similar to PD.
Scott can't even get Jim Welsh to contact him about the "model implementation". Like I said, if you try and try and try REALLY hard to contact them and they don't respond, are you still a big bastard for still using it anyways??
Yes, if by that you (knowingly and unnecessarily) put your users in danger.
What good is software that isn't ever used again? Somebody please tell me!
You can lobby your lawmakers to change this (unfortunately, this would need to happen globally, due to Berne), but until we get there, as John said, just ignoring laws that we consider wrong won't help.
- Try to locate the named authors and ask them if they or the university own(ed) the copyright, then ask them or the university whether they have released it.
"Hey, I found $10, I put it in the bank for 40 years, made $10000, is it yours???" (Wonder what the reply will be.)
That's why it's better to ask before you made $10000 (i.e., before we base a big project on it), to avoid unpleasant surprises later.
Frank