On Wed, 4 Aug 2010 02:36:28 am samiam@moorecad.com wrote:
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: Quo vadis, GPC? From: Steven D'Aprano steve@pearwood.info Date: Tue, August 03, 2010 8:39 am To: gpc@gnu.de
I won't do what you wrote justice by quoting it.
How very ironic that you have written your email in such a way as to falsely attribute what YOU said to ME.
However, you have misquoted me
I, on the other hand, gave you the respect and justice of quoting you exactly rather than making vague accusations of wrong-doing. To accuse me of misquoting you when anyone who checks your original email will see that I quoted you correctly speaks volumes. This is the internet -- your original post is archived for everyone to see:
http://www2.gnu-pascal.de/crystal/gpc/en/mail14805.html
and people can see that I did not misquote you, as you accuse, but quoted you correctly.
Steven D'Aprano wrote:
On Wed, 4 Aug 2010 02:36:28 am samiam@moorecad.com wrote:
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: Quo vadis, GPC? From: Steven D'Aprano steve@pearwood.info Date: Tue, August 03, 2010 8:39 am To: gpc@gnu.de
I won't do what you wrote justice by quoting it.
How very ironic that you have written your email in such a way as to falsely attribute what YOU said to ME.
However, you have misquoted me
I, on the other hand, gave you the respect and justice of quoting you exactly rather than making vague accusations of wrong-doing. To accuse me of misquoting you when anyone who checks your original email will see that I quoted you correctly speaks volumes. This is the internet -- your original post is archived for everyone to see:
http://www2.gnu-pascal.de/crystal/gpc/en/mail14805.html
and people can see that I did not misquote you, as you accuse, but quoted you correctly.
Sadly, it isn't the first time. I've seen it before, both on Usenet and in private mail exchanges. That's why discussions with Scott are often unproductive. At some point he makes some bold statement (like in this case: "GNU wishes to produce software that cannot be legally used for paid work, or the basis for paid work.") and when presented with counter-evidence, he just quits the discussion under some pretense. (Yes, pretense -- calling a ridiculous statement ridiculous is not an insult, Scott. [1])
I note he also choose to ignore my reply (http://www.gnu-pascal.de/crystal/gpc/en/mail14806.html), even though he apparently couldn't find any "insult" in it, even by his standards. I asked him by PM about it and waited a week; since he didn't reply, I have to assume he was just looking for an opportunity to weasel out when he ran out of arguments. I have only one word for such behaviour: childish.
Now, I was blunt, and I don't expect him to reply anymore, so as a farewell remark, Scott, let me just say that I don't think you've helped your agenda to spread Standard Pascal by alienating the community that (in your words) "backed the standard when few others did".
[1] I still wonder where you get this idea from that GNU doesn't allow paid work, or why you get so upset about the fact that some people do use it for paid work. It may be that free software doesn't suit your business model; fine, but denying that it can suit anybody else's, when living proof to the contrary is present in this very discussion, is just absurd. This is no insult, that's just stating the obvious.
Frank
Hi,
On 8/12/10, Frank Heckenbach ih8mj@fjf.gnu.de wrote:
(arguing snipped)
Sadly, it isn't the first time. I've seen it before, both on Usenet and in private mail exchanges. That's why discussions with Scott are often unproductive.
case Scott of wrong: correct(him); {gently} right: agree(him); otherwise dontWorry end;
I note he also choose to ignore my reply (http://www.gnu-pascal.de/crystal/gpc/en/mail14806.html), even though he apparently couldn't find any "insult" in it, even by his standards. I asked him by PM about it and waited a week; since he didn't reply, I have to assume
You know what they say about "assume". ;-)
Most people indeed don't worry about copyright for trivial stuff including boiler plate like websites. Content of websites? Maybe a different story, but I'd be surprised if most people cared. (I know that's not what you want to hear, but it's true.) Anyways, see http://www.standardpascal.com/rights.html
It may be true that now all work is by default copyrighted. I'm not even sure you can PD software in some countries (ugh). But most important is the original author(s)' intent. If they don't care, nobody else will. It's not worth arguing over their "rights" when they don't care anymore (or never did). Even GPL violations are up to the copyright holder to enforce.
(note that I BARELY know about Scott and only online, so I'm probably getting this fairly wrong, definitely incomplete, but in fairness I felt I should mention ...)
He's probably just busy!!! It seems he always has a lot on his plate. (Well, definitely, he's getting married soon, last I heard.) He doesn't even directly make his living off of IP Pascal either. So that's yet another spare time project (although he uses it for his own contract work).
Now, I was blunt, and I don't expect him to reply anymore, so as a farewell remark, Scott, let me just say that I don't think you've helped your agenda to spread Standard Pascal by alienating the community that (in your words) "backed the standard when few others did".
His whole point of modifying P4 into P5 was to help the standards. And he's placing his work there also in the PD. And yes, he's using IP (and GPC also) to test because they support the standards. He just obviously thinks differently than you guys and does things in a different way.
I think his main complaints against ISO 10206 ("extended") were that it was 1). more complicated than necessary, and 2). severely impacted performance despite the fact that "classic" ISO 7185 was meant to be reasonably efficient.
[1] I still wonder where you get this idea from that GNU doesn't allow paid work, or why you get so upset about the fact that some people do use it for paid work.
He may (?) have meant the tendency for GPL software to be free in freedom and beer. Sure, you can hire somebody, it can cost money, but a lot of times it doesn't.
On Thu, 12 Aug 2010, Rugxulo wrote:
Hi,
On 8/12/10, Frank Heckenbach ih8mj@fjf.gnu.de wrote:
case Scott of wrong: correct(him); {gently} right: agree(him); otherwise dontWorry end;
This is actually good policy when dealing with most people.
--------------------------| John L. Ries | Salford Systems | Phone: (619)543-8880 x107 | or (435)867-8885 | --------------------------|
Rugxulo wrote:
case Scott of wrong: correct(him); {gently}
And then get accused of misquoting and insulting.
I note he also choose to ignore my reply (http://www.gnu-pascal.de/crystal/gpc/en/mail14806.html), even though he apparently couldn't find any "insult" in it, even by his standards. I asked him by PM about it and waited a week; since he didn't reply, I have to assume
You know what they say about "assume". ;-)
Well, if you ask someone if he's going to reply, and he doesn't reply either to the mail in question or the second request, what are you going to do?
Most people indeed don't worry about copyright for trivial stuff including boiler plate like websites.
A compiler is trivial stuff? (Remember this was about P5; web sites were only mentioned as evidence for one thing or another.)
It may be true that now all work is by default copyrighted. I'm not even sure you can PD software in some countries (ugh). But most important is the original author(s)' intent. If they don't care, nobody else will.
But they can change their minds later, so basing a new project and investing a lot of time/money in it when the rights are not clear is still dangerous.
I think his main complaints against ISO 10206 ("extended") were that it was 1). more complicated than necessary, and 2). severely impacted performance despite the fact that "classic" ISO 7185 was meant to be reasonably efficient.
Not sure how this relates to the topic. We can certainly discuss the merits of 10206, preferably in a side-thread.
[1] I still wonder where you get this idea from that GNU doesn't allow paid work, or why you get so upset about the fact that some people do use it for paid work.
He may (?) have meant the tendency for GPL software to be free in freedom and beer. Sure, you can hire somebody, it can cost money, but a lot of times it doesn't.
But he wrote: "GNU wishes to produce software that cannot be legally used for paid work, or the basis for paid work."
Do you see a slight difference between the two versions?
Frank
On Fri, 13 Aug 2010 02:26:41 am Rugxulo wrote:
It may be true that now all work is by default copyrighted. I'm not even sure you can PD software in some countries (ugh). But most important is the original author(s)' intent.
That is possibly the LEAST important factor. What the original author wants doesn't matter. What matters is what the current copyright holder thinks, and what the law says.
If they don't care, nobody else will. It's not worth arguing over their "rights" when they don't care anymore (or never did).
That's simply not true. What happens when the author dies, and his heirs inherit ownership of the copyrighted work? What guarantee do you have that they will be as easy-going with regard to copyright as the original owner? Without a licence from the original author, this becomes a clear and obvious case of infringement.
What happens if the work was written under the auspices of a university, which in 1972 was quite happy to let the author publish without a copyright notice, but in 2010 discover that under the terms of their employment contract at the time, they actually own the copyright, not the author?
Or what happens if responsibility for enforcing copyright is separate from the creative act? You can have a situation where the left hand is explicitly encouraging people to use copyrighted material, while the right hand is threatening those same people for infringement. A recent case, where the Discovery Channel's marketing department provided promotional material to a fan website, and the legal department then threatened them with a lawsuit and forced the owner to hand over ownership of the domain:
http://blog.mx510.com/2010/08/10/discovery-threatens-fan-site-it-also-promot...
Don't imagine for one second that this is unique. I've even seen cases where the marketing department of a record label uploaded videos to YouTube, and the legal department then made DMCA claims and had their own videos removed. (I can't find the link right now, sorry.)
I note that you made a quip:
You know what they say about "assume".
and then immediately go on to advise us to assume that the absence of an explicit prohibition against copying a work is the same as permission to copy. That's terribly irresponsible. Under copyright law, it works the other way: in the absence of explicit permission, you are legally required to assume the prohibition stands.
Steven D'Aprano wrote:
Don't imagine for one second that this is unique. I've even seen cases where the marketing department of a record label uploaded videos to YouTube, and the legal department then made DMCA claims and had their own videos removed. (I can't find the link right now, sorry.)
If you find the link, please send it to me. Sounds really funny/stupid. (I have a guess which record label this might be, but I'll keep it to me. ;-)
Rugxulo wrote:
You're right, good point, BUT copyright was never meant to be extended indefinitely.
Not indefinitely, but for a long time. Even the minimum terms of the Berne Convention are "almost forever", especially WRT software.
And there are a lot of crazy laws. You can't please everybody, even if you try. It's a minefield. I'm not saying you shouldn't try, but pretending that a law (standard) matters over what most people think (Borland) is naive at best.
Can't follow you here. This isn't about Borland, but P5.
But anyway, the law matters because you can be sued about it. You cannot be (successfully) sued based on public opinion only -- thankfully, or would you like to return to medieval witch trials?
What happens when the compiler for the copyrighted work is no longer available? What happens when the OS it ran on is no longer available?
You port it to another compiler or OS. That's why having source code available is important, especially in the long run.
What happens when it's no longer available for sale?
If it's copyrighted and not freely licensed, you're screwed. If it was released under a free license, you can keep using it. All important free licenses are irrevocable retrospectively. So even if the copyright holder changes his mind or disappears completely, you keep what you have. (You may not get new versions from them, but you can make your own, as long as it's free software.)
What happens when the cpu it runs on is no longer mass produced?
If it's assembler code, you port it (again, requires the source code, and takes some work) or run it in an emulator (which is actually a common thing to do now for many of the 1980's home computers). If it's a high-level language, you just compile it on a new target (possibly with small adaptations).
(See, I can worry too!)
And as I hopefully showed you, free software addresses your concerns.
What happens if nobody remembers how to use it?
RTFS. :-)
What happens if everybody is too busy arguing legalities to appreciate the gift horse (and his mouth or whatever)?
You point them to a FAQ.
BTW, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html
BTW, many people have rescinded licenses for various things without any good reason. And they scream and yell how they are allowed to push people around. It's disgusting. "Oops, sorry, end users, we don't care about you." Big surprise. It's not the first time nor the last.
Again, this can't happen with most free software licenses.
Like I said, it's moot here since nobody here (except Scott) is using P4 or P5 for a compiler. BUT, if we were, I would definitely ask Steve P. (and whoever else) for some kind of reassurance. If that failed to get any response, I would not worry and proceed as normal.
[...]
It's kinda funny that this comes up today. I've had a certain book in my possession for months now because the person I returned it to (so they could return it to their mother, who loaned it to me) accidentally returned it back to me (!) and yet refused to retrieve it! Am I legally bound to return what I already returned, even at my own inconvenience? If so, how fast should I send it? I already told them twice about it, and they gave me the runaround. I finally just said, "Forget it, I'll mail it directly." Had to do it myself, they weren't responsible enough to do it! (Note that this book was only $15 new, which is very small claims at best. How much is a compiler [or more specifically, P4] worth to you??)
I also had some really old baseball cards I assumed for YEARS belonged to a distant family member, but that person never stayed in contact with me. (I am much younger.) I never could even confirm whose they were, much less what to do with them. I finally shipped them off to the "nearest" other relative I could find. Legally, I have no idea what I would be required to do, but I did my best to be fair (even if it took like twenty years, and note that I'm only 31, heh).
So yes, I do indeed care, but often times it's worrying over nothing.
I think that's skewed comparisons.
- In your examples, the maximum damage can't be much higher than the face value of the items, i.e. minimal.
- If it's about software, the simplest case would be programs you just use a few times and are not invested in any way, e.g. games. Though already then, legal damages and lawyer fees can be much higher than the actual price.
- If it's a compiler you use to build your own programs, and you don't have a license, the copyright holder can force you to stop using it (besides demanding damages). In this case you have to port your code to another compiler, at least, immediately (apart from damages).
- If you actually base your own project on the other one (as was implied here), the copyright holder can basically bring down your project if you don't have a proper license. And for a big project (such as GPC), this means many man-years and/or equivalent amounts of money, i.e. enormous damages (regardless of the "value" of the code used), apart from damaged reputation etc.
So the danger is much higher than you seem to imagine.
Maybe your argument is: We can't win anyway, so let's do anything. While big companies often try to manipulate laws to their advantage, it's not true that they always get everything. See e.g. http://gpl-violations.org/ for some cases where the GPL was successfully enforced in court, also against some bigger companies.
Frank
On 13 Aug 2010, at 22:08, Frank Heckenbach wrote:
Steven D'Aprano wrote:
Don't imagine for one second that this is unique. I've even seen cases where the marketing department of a record label uploaded videos to YouTube, and the legal department then made DMCA claims and had their own videos removed. (I can't find the link right now, sorry.)
If you find the link, please send it to me. Sounds really funny/stupid.
http://boingboing.net/2010/03/18/youtube-viacom-secre.html
"Viacom's efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself."
Jonas
Hi,
On 8/13/10, Frank Heckenbach ih8mj@fjf.gnu.de wrote:
Rugxulo wrote:
You're right, good point, BUT copyright was never meant to be extended indefinitely.
Not indefinitely, but for a long time. Even the minimum terms of the Berne Convention are "almost forever", especially WRT software.
Software is different than movies or books or whatever. It shouldn't have 70+ years of copyright. I mean, in theory, that'd be great, software that works forever, but in reality it never does, too many incompatibilties, too much of a moving target. Software depreciates very quickly, too quickly even (for my tastes). At least books don't need a specialized machine just to read 'em. (CD, CD-G, CD-ROM, DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, DivX, Beta, VHS, etc) What good is being copyrighted if nobody can use it?? Better to let them use it while they can than kill it until nobody has any need for it.
And there are a lot of crazy laws. You can't please everybody, even if you try. It's a minefield. I'm not saying you shouldn't try, but pretending that a law (standard) matters over what most people think (Borland) is naive at best.
Can't follow you here. This isn't about Borland, but P5.
Well, I was saying that Borland had obviously won the popularity war with their Pascal dialect. So it doesn't matter if the law (standard) says something is mandatory (schema), nobody cares anyways (sadly?). Popular opinion really does matter more than the law. It's only when the law is heavily enforced that you have to comply. (Too many laws to obey, and how can you if they don't tell you?)
Yeah yeah, if you don't like the law or standard, change it. But that's harder than it sounds.
But anyway, the law matters because you can be sued about it. You cannot be (successfully) sued based on public opinion only -- thankfully, or would you like to return to medieval witch trials?
You can be sued for anything. Doesn't mean it will hold up in court, but if you just want to annoy someone, you can do lots of things. The law is blind, it doesn't prevent someone from being a bastard.
What happens when the compiler for the copyrighted work is no longer available? What happens when the OS it ran on is no longer available?
You port it to another compiler or OS. That's why having source code available is important, especially in the long run.
Yes, I know this, I'm just saying, there are lots of things to worry about (if you let yourself) !!
What happens when the cpu it runs on is no longer mass produced?
If it's assembler code, you port it (again, requires the source code, and takes some work) or run it in an emulator (which is actually a common thing to do now for many of the 1980's home computers). If it's a high-level language, you just compile it on a new target (possibly with small adaptations).
Yeah, emulators, which are great but often buggy and slow. So that pretty can be less than ideal, esp. since sharing files between host OS is often hard (or impossible).
BTW, Oracle is now suing Google over Android's Dalvik (Java-inspired?) VM for patent etc. violations. :-((
BTW, many people have rescinded licenses for various things without any good reason. And they scream and yell how they are allowed to push people around. It's disgusting. "Oops, sorry, end users, we don't care about you." Big surprise. It's not the first time nor the last.
Again, this can't happen with most free software licenses.
They'd still find a way. Don't forget that GPLv3 is preferred since it closes up some of the holes left by GPLv2 (tivoization). Yet v2 is still heavily preferred (and not always with the "or later" clause).
So yes, I do indeed care, but often times it's worrying over nothing.
I think that's skewed comparisons.
- In your examples, the maximum damage can't be much higher than the face value of the items, i.e. minimal.
Legally, maybe, but it could cause a rift with people, and that (intangible) is more painful than (limited) money. Well, in my case, I literally can't lose anything there, but still ... the point is valid. ;-)
- If it's about software, the simplest case would be programs you just use a few times and are not invested in any way, e.g. games. Though already then, legal damages and lawyer fees can be much higher than the actual price.
"If you can't afford an attorney, one will be provided for you." (Or, if I was really crazy, I could represent myself, heh. But you always lose when you do that.)
- If it's a compiler you use to build your own programs, and you don't have a license, the copyright holder can force you to stop using it (besides demanding damages). In this case you have to port your code to another compiler, at least, immediately (apart from damages).
The point is they really waited WAY too long to complain about P4 and these other things. And my (admittedly lame) examples were similarly not my fault and had no obvious solution (and nobody cared but me).
Sure, you can get mad because a lady uploads a video of her baby dancing with Prince music in the background, but why??? It's a little crazy. Seriously, it's ridiculous how tightly some people hold on to the idea of copyright, legalities, etc. (Why would a photographer want copyright on a picture of my dead grandfather for 70+ years??? And the copy shop refuses to copy it. Uh, hello? Silly enough? It especially makes me mad because it's literally just a press of a button to take a photo, no work involved!)
- If you actually base your own project on the other one (as was implied here), the copyright holder can basically bring down your project if you don't have a proper license. And for a big project (such as GPC), this means many man-years and/or equivalent amounts of money, i.e. enormous damages (regardless of the "value" of the code used), apart from damaged reputation etc.
So the danger is much higher than you seem to imagine.
I don't really advocate being careless, just don't suggest we stress ourselves beyond normal capacity over silly things. Sure, software is a big business, and there's big money to be made (blech). But it's really really counterproductive to sue or harass anyone. It's MUCH more sensible (but rare) to ask nicely, to help, to be patient, to presume good will on both sides, to cooperate, sponsor, etc.
Maybe your argument is: We can't win anyway, so let's do anything. While big companies often try to manipulate laws to their advantage, it's not true that they always get everything. See e.g. http://gpl-violations.org/ for some cases where the GPL was successfully enforced in court, also against some bigger companies.
No, big companies do indeed get the law swayed towards their advantage, even when it makes no sense. They hold on too tightly, and they lobby for changes in laws just to suit their bottom line. I know you know this. They really go too far. It's hard not to get mad at them because they really do trample all over us. (BTW, jailbreaking an iPod is considered legal now, according to Library of Congress.)
Rugxulo wrote:
On 8/13/10, Frank Heckenbach ih8mj@fjf.gnu.de wrote:
Rugxulo wrote:
You're right, good point, BUT copyright was never meant to be extended indefinitely.
Not indefinitely, but for a long time. Even the minimum terms of the Berne Convention are "almost forever", especially WRT software.
Software is different than movies or books or whatever. It shouldn't have 70+ years of copyright.
Yes, it shouldn't. But it does.
And there are a lot of crazy laws. You can't please everybody, even if you try. It's a minefield. I'm not saying you shouldn't try, but pretending that a law (standard) matters over what most people think (Borland) is naive at best.
Can't follow you here. This isn't about Borland, but P5.
Well, I was saying that Borland had obviously won the popularity war with their Pascal dialect. So it doesn't matter if the law (standard) says something is mandatory (schema), nobody cares anyways (sadly?). Popular opinion really does matter more than the law. It's only when the law is heavily enforced that you have to comply.
These are some really twisted arguments you make. (To be honest, I'm starting to think you're trolling. I'll give you the benefit of doubt -- so far.) First, law <> standard (in many ways). Second, any argument based on Borland "winning", isn't going to go well with me. (If you do a popularity contest, you should note that Pascal as a whole has lost heavily, IMHO to a large extent due to the fragmentation and unclean extensions by Borland.) Third, in civilized countries, most people usually obey the law even where it's not directly enforced. Fourth, as I explained often enough, in this case it's possible that it would be heavily enforced.
(Too many laws to obey, and how can you if they don't tell you?)
Yes, there are many laws, and we're probably not aware of all of them. But this discussion is about one specific law which we are aware of. So?
But anyway, the law matters because you can be sued about it. You cannot be (successfully) sued based on public opinion only -- thankfully, or would you like to return to medieval witch trials?
You can be sued for anything. Doesn't mean it will hold up in court, but if you just want to annoy someone, you can do lots of things. The law is blind, it doesn't prevent someone from being a bastard.
It does in some way. Not every lawsuit goes to court. Look up frivolous.
What happens when the compiler for the copyrighted work is no longer available? What happens when the OS it ran on is no longer available?
You port it to another compiler or OS. That's why having source code available is important, especially in the long run.
Yes, I know this, I'm just saying, there are lots of things to worry about (if you let yourself) !!
So you're saying because there are lots of things to worry about, don't worry? That's absurd. The opposite is true. I showed you how FS developers have addressed the concerns you raised.
BTW, many people have rescinded licenses for various things without any good reason. And they scream and yell how they are allowed to push people around. It's disgusting. "Oops, sorry, end users, we don't care about you." Big surprise. It's not the first time nor the last.
Again, this can't happen with most free software licenses.
They'd still find a way. Don't forget that GPLv3 is preferred since it closes up some of the holes left by GPLv2 (tivoization). Yet v2 is still heavily preferred (and not always with the "or later" clause).
Again, what does this have to do with this case??? If we got a license for P5, we'd have the compiler in source form, not in Tivoized form. Sorry, just citing random issues is not an argument, you have to show how they relate to the question at hand.
So yes, I do indeed care, but often times it's worrying over nothing.
I think that's skewed comparisons.
- In your examples, the maximum damage can't be much higher than the face value of the items, i.e. minimal.
Legally, maybe, but it could cause a rift with people, and that (intangible) is more painful than (limited) money. Well, in my case, I literally can't lose anything there, but still ... the point is valid. ;-)
Which point??? Because you may or may not get into personal trouble with your relatives over random stuff means exactly what WRT software licenses???
- If it's about software, the simplest case would be programs you just use a few times and are not invested in any way, e.g. games. Though already then, legal damages and lawyer fees can be much higher than the actual price.
"If you can't afford an attorney, one will be provided for you." (Or, if I was really crazy, I could represent myself, heh. But you always lose when you do that.)
Look up court costs (especially if you lose).
- If it's a compiler you use to build your own programs, and you don't have a license, the copyright holder can force you to stop using it (besides demanding damages). In this case you have to port your code to another compiler, at least, immediately (apart from damages).
The point is they really waited WAY too long to complain about P4 and these other things.
No, they didn't. Look up term limits in the relevant laws, not your personal opinion.
Sure, you can get mad because a lady uploads a video of her baby dancing with Prince music in the background, but why??? It's a little crazy. Seriously, it's ridiculous how tightly some people hold on to the idea of copyright, legalities, etc.
Yes, it is, I fully agree. It's also crazy that people drive with dangerous machines through cities. But do I ignore these facts and walk across the road with closed eyes?
But it's really really counterproductive to sue or harass anyone. It's MUCH more sensible (but rare) to ask nicely, to help, to be patient, to presume good will on both sides, to cooperate, sponsor, etc.
I agree. But you don't have to convince us, but the copyright holders -- whether ETHZ or individual authors. Explain your point to them and get a (legally valid, i.e. usually written) agreement from them.
Frank
Hi,
On 8/13/10, Frank Heckenbach ih8mj@fjf.gnu.de wrote:
Rugxulo wrote:
Well, I was saying that Borland had obviously won the popularity war with their Pascal dialect. So it doesn't matter if the law (standard) says something is mandatory (schema), nobody cares anyways (sadly?). Popular opinion really does matter more than the law. It's only when the law is heavily enforced that you have to comply.
These are some really twisted arguments you make. (To be honest, I'm starting to think you're trolling. I'll give you the benefit of doubt -- so far.)
writeln('*sigh*');
It is Pascal-related, and this is the GPC mailing list. Surely that alone means I'm not, even if you disagree.
First, law <> standard (in many ways).
Sorry, I know it was a weak argument. I'm just saying, some laws are really really really stupid. And some standards are really really really ignored (Algol-68, anyone?). Both are meant to regulate things.
Second, any argument based on Borland "winning", isn't going to go well with me.
I like ISO 7185 (!), from what tiny bit I've programmed in Pascal. I haven't messed with 10206 really, but it seems good also. Not perfect, but nothing is.
This is why I, first and foremost, wrote my Befunge-93 interpreter in standard / classic Pascal. I wanted something portable, not just some ad hoc implementation that only works on one or two compilers.
(I was already aware of DOS TP7 and also a Win3x Delphi versions by Stepan Roh. But they were Borland-specific. Plus they didn't like ALPHABOX.BEF for some reason. His Win3x version was buggy on WinXP [toolbar], and his DOS one had the RTE200 bug, no LFNs, no *nix LF support, and neither would probably run on Win64. Oh, and it was partially in Czech! But FPC compiled it fine, though, out of the box (!), fixing most of that. Yet I still wrote my own! GPC was my preferred compiler! Borland style *only* wasn't "acceptable" to me.)
But of all the (tens of) compilers I found on the Internet, most of them only tried to support Borland-style (e.g. FPC, VP21, Vector). Only a very few claim to support ISO 7185, even fewer ISO 10206. So it's fairly obvious (to me) that ISO 7185 / 10206 aren't first choice for most Pascal users. (Hence I couldn't rely on using get/put and f^.) Please don't take it as an offense. I know that GPC supports standards, and that's indeed a benefit, not a drawback. But I have to be realistic! In the end my program is more portable than "just" standard or "just" Borland! It supports both! I didn't let their restrictions define me. (At worst I would've just written two separate versions.)
(If you do a popularity contest, you should note that Pascal as a whole has lost heavily, IMHO to a large extent due to the fragmentation and unclean extensions by Borland.)
Borland was only popular initially because it was cheap and fast. It wasn't that bad, but I know it wasn't perfect. At least (now) we have GPC and FPC (et al.) to fill in the big gaps Borland couldn't.
I don't really think Pascal has "lost", but it is less popular than previously (dunno why).
Third, in civilized countries, most people usually obey the law even where it's not directly enforced. Fourth, as I explained often enough, in this case it's possible that it would be heavily enforced.
You know what I mean. I'm not trying to be a revolutionary. I'm just saying, some laws are really dumb and shouldn't (or can't) be obeyed. Obviously we should all be good citizens, but it depends on where you live (argh)! So nobody can agree, which makes me feel less than pleased with the "perfect" legal system. Plus my main point was that there are so many laws that nobody can know for sure what's legal or not, esp. when it keeps changing. Hence nobody (well, nobody with a life) really obsesses too deeply about it. Some people have more fun legislating to others than actually obeying it themselves. I'd rather watch paint dry than sit in court or even think about the legal system.
(Too many laws to obey, and how can you if they don't tell you?)
Yes, there are many laws, and we're probably not aware of all of them. But this discussion is about one specific law which we are aware of. So?
Does Brazil have the same laws? Do they care as much about copyright as other countries? (Doubt it.) What about Japan? China? Or are we just assuming everyone follows the U.S.? I didn't say it wasn't a minefield, and I didn't say copyright / piracy / patents / whatever wasn't enforced, just that it's tricky to get things right.
Maybe it's simpler for me to not care than you, I dunno. My life isn't so complex that I have to worry. I'm just saying, don't worry as much about the letter of the law as much as trying to do good work (which *should* be the spirit of all laws).
law is blind, it doesn't prevent someone from being a bastard.
It does in some way. Not every lawsuit goes to court. Look up frivolous.
In the U.K. I think you have to pay the winner's legal fees if you are convicted of slandering them. But most other places it's not like that. Are you really going to consult 190+ lawyers for every country in the world? (Doubt it.)
Yes, I know this, I'm just saying, there are lots of things to worry about (if you let yourself) !!
So you're saying because there are lots of things to worry about, don't worry? That's absurd. The opposite is true. I showed you how FS developers have addressed the concerns you raised.
I'm well aware of free software's accomplishments. I meant that the world is a mess, most people "don't care" about anything, laws vary, and that you can only do your best, not please everyone else. If you try to please everyone, you will fail. Try your best to follow the law, sure, but don't worry about every little nitpicky detail as if your life depends on it (it doesn't).
They'd still find a way. Don't forget that GPLv3 is preferred since it closes up some of the holes left by GPLv2 (tivoization). Yet v2 is still heavily preferred (and not always with the "or later" clause).
Again, what does this have to do with this case??? If we got a license for P5, we'd have the compiler in source form, not in Tivoized form. Sorry, just citing random issues is not an argument, you have to show how they relate to the question at hand.
The point was you generalized on free software licenses as if they solved everything, and they don't. GPLv3 (which GPC uses) explicitly covered some holes left by GPLv2. So don't tell me "most free software protects you" when they don't. There are still ways for people to screw you. (Most people still use GPLv2, esp. Linux. Now I don't personally think it's that big a deal, but some people, sheesh ....) We can't even get FSF and Debian and OSI to agree on what constitutes "free" (see OpenWatcom's license debate)! *BSD surely hate GPLv3 (why?), so they won't help. So that's yet another minefield to traverse.
Laws? Obey or be sued. Licenses? Be compatible or be ignored. People? Be nice or be hated. Compilers? Support dialects and various OSes or be unused.
Legally, maybe, but it could cause a rift with people, and that (intangible) is more painful than (limited) money. Well, in my case, I literally can't lose anything there, but still ... the point is valid. ;-)
Which point??? Because you may or may not get into personal trouble with your relatives over random stuff means exactly what WRT software licenses???
That (obviously) people are more important than legalities, laws, software, licenses, etc. They can annoy you more than any technical problem you encounter. Having friends is much more productive than arguing or hating someone or being depressed. So it's better not to burn any bridges. Money comes and goes, that's very temporary. It's not worth worrying about.
Besides, again, who enforces the law? Who is the law meant to protect? PEOPLE! The law is not a living being. So who do you listen to, the law of 1972 or 2010 or of the people who actually stand to lose / gain from what you are doing? (And we have judges to interpret the law, so it matters more what they say than what we personally think it means or even what it traditionally used to mean!)
Here, I think I heard that nobody (EDIT: in the state legislature!) gives a rat's ass about what the (early 1900s) state constitution says, esp. if they consider it "racist". But it takes forever to rewrite, so they haven't yet (I think). Should we obey the racist law or use better judgment? And clearly wasting time to rewrite it isn't a huge priority or they'd have already done so. So please don't tell me that the law is so perfect, it's not.
"If you can't afford an attorney, one will be provided for you." (Or, if I was really crazy, I could represent myself, heh. But you always lose when you do that.)
Look up court costs (especially if you lose).
I do not support illegal activities unless the law is unjust. But I will also not waste my entire life reading a hallway full of legal books either. If they change the law, that's their problem, not mine. I just don't care enough about most things to fight over them. I am not a lawyer and have no interest in that.
Anyways, Scott said Pemberton was well aware of his efforts but stopped responding to his emails. (He has small kids, so he's probably also "just busy".) So who else to contact? And why bother if Frank "the GPC Boss" doesn't care to use P4/P5? So it will sit in legal limbo for another millenium because nobody cares. I'm curious, even diligent at times, but even I can't pretend to follow dead cases about things that nobody cares about. We have to draw the line somewhere.
If it makes you feel better, do nothing, but please don't flame me just because I'm a realist and not a legal pedant. (I'm sorry to have intruded upon your conversation, but sometimes I think my opinion is more insightful than it really is. Doh.)
The point is they really waited WAY too long to complain about P4 and these other things.
No, they didn't. Look up term limits in the relevant laws, not your personal opinion.
You don't think 40 years is long enough to figure out whether they want to appropriate P4 or not??? Like Scott said, they've probably all retired!! (I'm only 31.)
Yes, it is, I fully agree. It's also crazy that people drive with dangerous machines through cities. But do I ignore these facts and walk across the road with closed eyes?
I didn't say walk blindly, but sometimes the damn walk signal won't change (broken). Sometimes the street markers wear out. Sometimes signs fall down. Sometimes driving laws change. You can't blindly accept them and assume you're safe. You have to do what's best for you (and others), not try to please an old crusty law (or worse, a law that is a moving target).
I would rather technically "jaywalk" across a street when no cars are coming than try to cross during heavy traffic just because the "Walk" sign says so. Just being "legal" doesn't protect you either.
I agree. But you don't have to convince us, but the copyright holders -- whether ETHZ or individual authors. Explain your point to them and get a (legally valid, i.e. usually written) agreement from them.
I already said that would be wise. But if you can't get a response, what do you do? Give up or act reasonably and go ahead anyways? (But it's moot, you already said you don't care about P4/P5.)
Rugxulo wrote:
Does Brazil have the same laws?
Yes, essentially (i.e., Berne convention):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_international_copyright_agre...
Do they care as much about copyright as other countries? (Doubt it.) What about Japan? China? Or are we just assuming everyone follows the U.S.?
Rather Switzerland here -- the home of the Berne convention, the location of ETHZ, the nationality of Wirth ...
Maybe it's simpler for me to not care than you, I dunno. My life isn't so complex that I have to worry. I'm just saying, don't worry as much about the letter of the law as much as trying to do good work (which *should* be the spirit of all laws).
In your own fantasy country. In reality, many laws are not so -- especially patents quite explicitly prevent doing much good work, copyright to some extent.
They'd still find a way. Don't forget that GPLv3 is preferred since it closes up some of the holes left by GPLv2 (tivoization). Yet v2 is still heavily preferred (and not always with the "or later" clause).
Again, what does this have to do with this case??? If we got a license for P5, we'd have the compiler in source form, not in Tivoized form. Sorry, just citing random issues is not an argument, you have to show how they relate to the question at hand.
The point was you generalized on free software licenses as if they solved everything, and they don't.
No, I, didn't!!! I went through your concerns (old OS, old CPU, stopped selling, ...) point by point and showed you how they are addressed. That's the opposite of generalization.
GPLv3 (which GPC uses) explicitly covered some holes left by GPLv2.
Some specific holes like Tivoization which don't apply here.
So don't tell me "most free software protects you" when they don't.
So far the GPL has stood pretty well in court and in out of court settlements.
(Most people still use GPLv2, esp. Linux. Now I don't personally think it's that big a deal, but some people, sheesh ....) We can't even get FSF and Debian and OSI to agree on what constitutes "free" (see OpenWatcom's license debate)! *BSD surely hate GPLv3 (why?), so they won't help. So that's yet another minefield to traverse.
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.
Some licenses try to address more issues (e.g. GPL, to prevent non-free derived works, GPL 3 to prevent Tivoization, among other things), but they all share a common feature, which is that one can use the code and base (at least) further free projects on it with the assurance that the copyright holder cannot prevent it later. That's all that would be required here. We don't need P5 to prevent Tivoization -- we can do it with our own code; and even if we didn't, Tivoization will not bring the project down, it just allows some form of non-free spinoffs.
That (obviously) people are more important than legalities, laws, software, licenses, etc. They can annoy you more than any technical problem you encounter.
s/technical/legal/?
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? I haven't, but I imagine it's much worse than quarreling with your friends about some baseball cards which will be forgotten in a few weeks.
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.)
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'm curious, even diligent at times, but even I can't pretend to follow dead cases about things that nobody cares about. We have to draw the line somewhere.
If we were going to use it, it wouldn't be a dead case (anymore).
The point is they really waited WAY too long to complain about P4 and these other things.
No, they didn't. Look up term limits in the relevant laws, not your personal opinion.
You don't think 40 years is long enough to figure out whether they want to appropriate P4 or not???
The law doesn't think so. Until copyright expires, the copyright holders can change their mind any day -- unless they've bound themselves not to do this (by releasing it as free software or into the public domain).
I agree. But you don't have to convince us, but the copyright holders -- whether ETHZ or individual authors. Explain your point to them and get a (legally valid, i.e. usually written) agreement from them.
I already said that would be wise. But if you can't get a response, what do you do?
You don't use it as a basis of your work.
: In true hacker fashion, Stallman began looking for existing : programs and tools that could be converted into GNU programs and : tools. One of the first was a compiler named VUCK, which converted : programs written in the popular C programming language into : machine-readable code. Translated from the Dutch, the program's : acronym stood for the Free University Compiler Kit. Optimistic, : Stallman asked the program's author if the program was free. When : the author informed him that the words "Free University" were a : reference to the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, Stallman was : chagrined. : : "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."
If you, or somebody else, chooses to take that risk, then by all means do so. Just do so with full understanding that you *are* infringing copyright, and even if the author is happy to turn a blind eye, the copyright holder might not be.
I have no intention of screwing over anybody. But we're talking about something very small and old. Doesn't mean legal wars haven't been waged on similarly old or small stuff, but still ... it doesn't seem like it's THAT big a deal!
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. :-)
We're not designing our perfect copyright law, nor are we documenting all the crazy things people do. We're trying to help Frank decide what the future of gpc should be.
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."
P5 is Scott's (heavy) modification. I don't know if it's enough to constitute a whole "new" work or just another derivative.
It's a derivative.
Isn't there some rule that if it changes enough to be unrecognizable that it's no longer a derivative but a new work?
Maybe if the changes are so extensive that no remnants of the original are recognizable (and even then I'm not sure, if the original was needed as an essential intermediate step), which is surely not the case with P5.
Right. But according to Pemberton's website:
http://homepages.cwi.nl/~steven/pascal/
"Included here is the Pascal source of a public-domain Pascal compiler and interpreter, the P4 compiler and interpreter."
Now we might be getting somewhere (after a lot of irrelevant discussion). However, this is a statement made by Steven Pemberton who didn't write the compiler (as you cited). The linked source code lists the authors, but contains no statement about (lack of) copyright.
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, 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.
- 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.
Frank
Hi,
On 8/14/10, Frank Heckenbach ih8mj@fjf.gnu.de wrote:
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!
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.
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". Besides, the only available copy is an "old" Win32 demo (limited to 200 lines!) from 2005. So good luck using that for GPC!! ;-)
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.
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).
: "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? 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.
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. ;-))
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! He wrote several Pascal compilers for several processors over the years, originally in asm, later mostly in Pascal. P5 is a new adaptation of P4 to fully comply with ISO 7185 (instead of wimpy subset, which you also hate), esp. because P4 is PD and well-documented already (and a good test case for his own compiler).
Right. But according to Pemberton's website:
http://homepages.cwi.nl/~steven/pascal/
"Included here is the Pascal source of a public-domain Pascal compiler and interpreter, the P4 compiler and interpreter."
Now we might be getting somewhere (after a lot of irrelevant discussion). However, this is a statement made by Steven Pemberton who didn't write the compiler (as you cited). The linked source code lists the authors, but contains no statement about (lack of) copyright.
Which, thanks to dopey laws, doesn't have to be explicit anymore, so they can wake up from their coma 40 years later and say, "Hmmm, I might be able to get $100 from Frank! Sue him, screw him!" (Thanks, Berne.)
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? What if he lost it? What if there is (or was) no "legal" way for it to be declared PD even if the authors' intended that?? Gah, I guess I should just e-mail him, but as you know, that never gets anywhere. *sigh*
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?? What good is software that isn't ever used again? Somebody please tell me!
- 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.)
P.S. I know you hate the baseball cards analogy, but most of them were from 1972, which is actually older than "pint.p" (1976). And yet I still wouldn't really value it over $100 for all of them (small box), if even. Hence I only paid like $2.25 (plus S&H) for insurance up to that amount, nothing more.
On 15 Aug 2010, at 04:33, Rugxulo wrote:
On 8/14/10, Frank Heckenbach ih8mj@fjf.gnu.de wrote:
A copyright holder has no obligation to explain himself or argue with you.
[snip]
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.
The size has nothing to do with the term "public domain". Even if it were 20 lines of non-trivial code, it would still be copyrighted. Stop inventing your own definitions of legal terms (whatever you think they should be), it only muddies the discussion.
I'd rather you ask FPC about whether they are (or will adapt to) GPLv3 (compatible).
FPC is licensed under the GPLv2 with the "or (at your option) any later version" clause. So it's GPLv3 compatible.
Legal papers?? From whom? Why would he? What if he lost it? What if there is (or was) no "legal" way for it to be declared PD even if the authors' intended that??
Then that's tough luck.
Jonas
Hi,
On 8/15/10, Jonas Maebe jonas.maebe@elis.ugent.be wrote:
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.
The size has nothing to do with the term "public domain". Even if it were 20 lines of non-trivial code, it would still be copyrighted. Stop inventing your own definitions of legal terms (whatever you think they should be), it only muddies the discussion.
The point was that it's nothing huge enough that they can act like it took them 20 years to write and is worth millions of dollars. Their livelihood is clearly not being diminished due to our potential use of it. (And if anybody ever sues over 20 lines, I'd be surprised.)
And why should I stop inventing my own thoughts? Nobody else stops passing stupid laws! It doesn't bother them to legislate and change everything and force their ideas on us, even when it clearly wasn't thought out properly, so how is my random idea any worse?
I'd rather you ask FPC about whether they are (or will adapt to) GPLv3 (compatible).
FPC is licensed under the GPLv2 with the "or (at your option) any later version" clause. So it's GPLv3 compatible.
I looked and couldn't find anything about that, only saw COPYING, which did not say "or later" at all (except to say that the authors have that option). The compiler driver fpc.exe didn't say anything either (even with -va or whatever). Even the FPC website only says "GPL" without any version (although I knew it wasn't v3). I looked in various FPC/Win32 .PDFs too, couldn't find anything. So I tried, I really did. It wasn't THAT obvious! Please tell me where I should find it. Maybe I missed it in some obvious place (but GREP didn't help either).
Actually, somewhere it said "copyright 1993-2009, Florian Klampfl" (I think), though I didn't know all the other contributors had explicitly given him (in writing) legal ownership of their copyrights. I also didn't know you, Jonas, were his legal representative to tell us 100% positively what the license of the compiler, RTL, etc. is (but I naively assume you're telling the truth here).
I know GNU is more strict about this (Emacs vs. XEmacs). I'm just saying, sometimes you can't tie up all the loose ends, even if you try!
Legal papers?? From whom? Why would he? What if he lost it? What if there is (or was) no "legal" way for it to be declared PD even if the authors' intended that??
Then that's tough luck.
So instead of building on publicly available sources, which have been available longer than I've been alive, we're supposed to let them rot "just because" somebody somewhere might arbitrarily throw a hissy fit. Wonderful.
We didn't invade their house and pilfer their silverware, just attempting to use what is already available (and without any mention of license anywhere except Pemberton's claim that it's PD, which for some odd reason is horribly dubious because he's such a devious liar, naturally).
P.S. We're all free software advocates here. P5, FPC, GPC are all "open source" (loose sense of the term)! So it's not like the original P4 authors are "losing" anything. They can use our changes and improvements! The only thing that they can't do is (guarantee successfully to) exclusively sell P4 outright, but you're basically saying they may want to do so in the future (maybe in another 40 years, heh, ugh).
Read the last paragraph first before starting to reply!
Rugxulo wrote:
On 8/15/10, Jonas Maebe jonas.maebe@elis.ugent.be wrote:
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.
The size has nothing to do with the term "public domain". Even if it were 20 lines of non-trivial code, it would still be copyrighted. Stop inventing your own definitions of legal terms (whatever you think they should be), it only muddies the discussion.
The point was that it's nothing huge enough that they can act like it took them 20 years to write and is worth millions of dollars.
Where in copyright law does it say it needs to take them 20 years to write and be worth millions of dollars in order to have copyright?
My point, in case you're referring to this is, it might take *us* several years to write a new GPC and the result might be worth quite a bit, and they could bring it down with even a small copyright claim.
And why should I stop inventing my own thoughts?
He didn't say that. Read the quote (it's still there above). He said: "Stop inventing your own definitions of legal terms". And I would add: Stop misquoting people.
It doesn't bother them to legislate and change everything and force their ideas on us, even when it clearly wasn't thought out properly, so how is my random idea any worse?
Because lawyers and judges are not gonna follow your idea, but the law.
I also didn't know you, Jonas, were his legal representative to tell us 100% positively what the license of the compiler, RTL, etc. is (but I naively assume you're telling the truth here).
I suppose this alludes to my questioning of Pemberton's claim. But again, this is a bad example, since as Florian wrote, the statement is in the sources, whereas in the P4 source there is no such statement, as I pointed out.
So instead of building on publicly available sources, which have been available longer than I've been alive, we're supposed to let them rot "just because" somebody somewhere might arbitrarily throw a hissy fit. Wonderful.
Yes. Change the laws.
We didn't invade their house and pilfer their silverware, just attempting to use what is already available (and without any mention of license anywhere except Pemberton's claim that it's PD, which for some odd reason is horribly dubious because he's such a devious liar, naturally).
Who said he was a liar? Are you misquoting me now?
BTW, I assume you're still loyal to GPL (and maybe GNU) even if (some?) GCC devs really haven't been that helpful directly. Obviously if you were to (help) rewrite GPC, it doesn't have to be GPL anything. You could use BSD, ISC, WTFPL, or whatever.
Yes, I prefer the GPL (which hasn't much to do with what GCC developers do -- RMS hasn't worked in GCC for a long time AFAIK). Besides, as I wrote, it might reuse parts of the existing GPC (e.g., the lexer, parser and runtime interface), in which case it would need to be GPL.
I blindly assume it's not anybody at FSF or GNU proper who is suggesting that GPC needs a rewrite. So they don't care. So all your worries (as is typical for a GNU project, a la GCC or Emacs) are probably unfounded.
You mean my worries about legal issues? No, they're not unfounded. The law doesn't apply only to GNU projects.
My silly Befunge interpreter in Pascal is approx. 150 lines (or 25 if manually obfuscated and stripped of unnecessary crud). It's *extremely* trivial, IMHO, and I wrote it! It's released to "public domain"
By which you acknowledge that you had the copyright (and then actively released it). If it wasn't copyrightable (because it was so small), you couldn't have released it in the first place. :-)
You really want to tell me that copyright applies there? Oh, and yes, I did publicly publish it, with PD notice, on the Pascal newsgroups, mostly because there were no posts except spam, *grumble grumble*. But I guess I might "change my mind" and try to enforce it when I'm (31+40=) 71, esp. since "public domain" isn't even possible in some countries (muahahahaha, profit, damages, whee!!). ;-))
*You* published it *with* a PD notice. That's more than what we know about P4 so far.
If you live in a country where releasing to PD is not possible, it may be problematic. (I once heard that it might be interpreted as a release under an all-permissive license, but since I'm no lawyer, I'm not sure about this.)
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?)
Damn it, Frank, give me some credit here. I'm not THAT dumb! Sheesh.
[...]
The point was that you hadn't really (openly) considered adapting FPC,
Took me a while to understand what you're apparently talking about here. Changing topics without notice doesn't make it easy to follow you. This subthread is about using P4/P5 in a new GPC, now you're talking about switching to FPC, or what? As I said before, I'm not going to do this with my code, but other users might do so.
Right. BUT if GNU and GCC are to have separate language frontends, *somebody* has to care. If not RMS, then who? Doesn't matter if he uses Pascal, he should have some say in who does what, how they help others, etc. Okay, maybe that's not his job, but it should be somebody's.
I don't need to write anything here because the answer is right there in the next quoted sentence from my last mail:
Each language frontend is developed by those who care about it.
What's not clear about this?
Well, yes, obviously, I mean, it would be easier if GPC was updated to work correctly with GCC 4.x instead of abandoning it completely.
Oh would it? Have you tried it? (Hint: We have. We haven't managed it in the last 10-20 years with our available time. That's why I started this discussion in the first place.)
But why won't they help fix the bugs? Why don't they integrate your patches? Etc. etc. It just seems dumb (to me) that they would ignore you since GPC is quite good.
Yes, it's not nice. But what can we do about it? We can whine about it, try to do it ourselves (as Waldek did for some time, but like all of us, he doesn't have unlimited available time), live with the problems, or get away from the backend. I personally prefer the latter.
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.
How so? (Well, I was mostly joking anyways.)
If we were to use it for any important purposes, and it's later "pulled away", the program would fall apart. And if it's not used for any important purpose, why use it at all?
- 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.)
You know, dare I call it a virtue, but most people don't live their life just to be legally pedantic and screw others over.
It takes only one to sue, not "most people".
Then try the second alternative. (It didn't say they were guaranteed to work, just possibilities.)
Note that this doesn't mean he's lying,
So you're arguing against yourself now? (Because noone but you talked about lying.)
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.
Which is really dumb, BTW, that an author / copyright holder can't do what they want with their own work just because some weird law disagrees.
I agree, but this is really the least problem. For practical purposes, it's basically the same as PD, and it doesn't take much more work for the author to do it.
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.
It's not knowingly and unnecessarily if you did your best to resolve it, is it??
- You tried to resolved it => you know about it, i.e. knowingly.
- You have alternatives (existing GPC; writing from scratch) => unnecessarily
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.
Please tell me how I'm such a horrible criminal
Ask the one who called you a horrible criminal (I didn't).
(IOW, you can make your wild exaggerations all day long, but they won't make your point. If you want to make a point, reply to what I or Jonas actually said.)
"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.
Except in this case, we both get $10000. Nobody loses!
And thanks to copyright law, they get to take your $10000 as well (and leave you with lawyer and court costs).
To cut this pointless discussion short, remember that we've all long agreed that we don't like the current laws. So please stop arguing this -- we all agree, and we can't change them on this mailing list. If you want to ignore/break laws, take this somewhere else, since we've made it very clear that the project is important enough (to us and to some of its users) that we won't risk it by breaking the laws. So if you have anything more to add, please restrict it to suggestions based on existing law.
Frank
Hi,
On 8/17/10, Frank Heckenbach ih8mj@fjf.gnu.de wrote:
Read the last paragraph first before starting to reply!
Done. But ...
I don't WANT to ignore or break laws, only some REALLY shouldn't or else CAN'T be obeyed without making someone's life 10 x more difficult for NO benefit. I am not a pirate or anarchist, but I do hate legalese! You think ISO 7185 or BP have holes and bugs? The legal system has a billion times more!
Keep in mind that all of this really centers around P4 (and P5), which Pemberton explicitly says is P.D., and the files themselves say nothing more restrictive (or at all). In fact, from what I can tell, Nageli is somehow involved as author in "pint.p", but he isn't listed in there. So even that is an omission that nobody felt important to include.
BTW, *I know you dislike unrelated comparisons but* Oberon download page on ETH suggests a BSD license for their current works, if that gives you any idea what they think nowadays. So if even their latest / greatest is freely available, what makes you think they want to restrict something older / less useful?? I know that's not proof, but I think it's a valid clue.
"based on existing law" ... for what, U.S. or Germany or ... ?
Unless you can prove that Pemberton is lying, I think it's safe to say that P4 is "public domain" (of some sort or similar)! Obviously nobody wants to use it, fine! Just stop pretending it's so illegal! "Murky" is even not the word I would use here, and that's (at worst) what the situation is!
Rugxulo wrote:
The point was that it's nothing huge enough that they can act like it took them 20 years to write and is worth millions of dollars.
Where in copyright law does it say it needs to take them 20 years to write and be worth millions of dollars in order to have copyright?
Where do you draw the line???? Atari saying the yellow dot from Adventure is trademarked????
Obviously P4/P5 aren't the easiest things to write, but they surely can't be the hardest either! The whole point was to avoid duplication of effort. But, again, brilliant that these laws are, they don't care, they only want to protect that which even the authors probably don't care about!!!
My point, in case you're referring to this is, it might take *us* several years to write a new GPC and the result might be worth quite a bit, and they could bring it down with even a small copyright claim.
Or patents. What are you going to do about that? Nothing, just stick your head in the sand, esp. 'cause you (EU) don't care. Of course, I don't either, but if you really WANT to worry incessantly ....
It doesn't bother them to legislate and change everything and force their ideas on us, even when it clearly wasn't thought out properly, so how is my random idea any worse?
Because lawyers and judges are not gonna follow your idea, but the law.
And they couldn't stretch the current law beyond its limits?? They'd somehow have to be all nice and moral and perfect "just because" they stick to the law? You think the law can't screw you? Where there's a will, there's a way! (Should fit right up your pessimistic attitude.)
I suppose this alludes to my questioning of Pemberton's claim. But again, this is a bad example, since as Florian wrote, the statement is in the sources, whereas in the P4 source there is no such statement, as I pointed out.
FPC clearly didn't make it very obvious what exact GPL they were using, probably because nobody cared!! To most people, free software / open source / GPL is probably "good enough" (all sounds the same).
We didn't invade their house and pilfer their silverware, just attempting to use what is already available (and without any mention of license anywhere except Pemberton's claim that it's PD, which for some odd reason is horribly dubious because he's such a devious liar, naturally).
Who said he was a liar? Are you misquoting me now?
If you don't think it's legally usable, then you are saying "it's not P.D.", which means you either thinks he's heavily incorrect or a liar.
<sarcasm> Are you saying I misquoted you? Because I didn't, you liar! <sarcasm>
Besides, as I wrote, it might reuse parts of the existing GPC (e.g., the lexer, parser and runtime interface), in which case it would need to be GPL.
... As a whole, not for every single piece. *BSD clearly uses GPLv2 reluctantly in rare cases, but they don't approve at all.
I blindly assume it's not anybody at FSF or GNU proper who is suggesting that GPC needs a rewrite. So they don't care. So all your worries (as is typical for a GNU project, a la GCC or Emacs) are probably unfounded.
You mean my worries about legal issues? No, they're not unfounded. The law doesn't apply only to GNU projects.
But only GNU projects seem to have a cow if they can't get impossibly airtight legal proof in written legal form.
By which you acknowledge that you had the copyright (and then actively released it). If it wasn't copyrightable (because it was so small), you couldn't have released it in the first place. :-)
I only WISH it wasn't copyrightable. And yes, I'm aware that some dummy somewhere decided (for us!) that every little trivial thing is copyrightable. So I explicitly say, "I don't care", in case some jackass whines later. I could've used GPL, but some people hate that. And the GPL license text is (much) bigger than the program, so I would rather not bloat up the .ZIP just for legalese (ugh). GNU Emacs, due to goofy legal paranoia, includes COPYING x 10 (or maybe more, I forget).
*You* published it *with* a PD notice. That's more than what we know about P4 so far.
We know (from PUG newsletters) that P4 was heavily spread around. There was a cost, but it was apparently from shipping and tape expenses. There was no mention about licenses. They seemed to want to spread Pascal as far as possible (and did!), which is easy when there aren't any arbitrary hurdles to overcome.
If you live in a country where releasing to PD is not possible, it may be problematic. (I once heard that it might be interpreted as a release under an all-permissive license, but since I'm no lawyer, I'm not sure about this.)
Why anybody (and I mean ANYBODY) would complain about P.D. software is beyond me.
This subthread is about using P4/P5 in a new GPC, now you're talking about switching to FPC, or what? As I said before, I'm not going to do this with my code, but other users might do so.
No, not users "porting" GPC -> FPC Pascal code, but GPC somehow sharing / integrating / rewriting for the FPC suite as a new dialect option (e.g. -extended), if you think writing a Pascal compiler in Pascal is important.
Each language frontend is developed by those who care about it.
What's not clear about this?
So who is it that doesn't care? Why is GPC 4.x so bugged? Why is it so hard? Why would a rewrite be reasonable at all then? What changed between 2007 (or 2005 or whatever) and now? Back in 2005, rumor was that GPC would be integrated fully, but that never happened. (GCC 4.x also came out around then.) Why??
But why won't they help fix the bugs? Why don't they integrate your patches? Etc. etc. It just seems dumb (to me) that they would ignore you since GPC is quite good.
Yes, it's not nice. But what can we do about it? We can whine about it, try to do it ourselves (as Waldek did for some time, but like all of us, he doesn't have unlimited available time), live with the problems, or get away from the backend. I personally prefer the latter.
Yes, if they aren't responsive or helpful, get away from them. Easier to change your own mind, control your own destiny than make someone else do anything. But it still seems dumb to have to do that for no inherently unavoidable reason.
You know, dare I call it a virtue, but most people don't live their life just to be legally pedantic and screw others over.
It takes only one to sue, not "most people".
They can sue anyways! Why do you think Novell etc. signed patent agreements? SCO sued IBM over Linux. Did you abandon Linux when that happened? No.
Which is really dumb, BTW, that an author / copyright holder can't do what they want with their own work just because some weird law disagrees.
I agree, but this is really the least problem. For practical purposes, it's basically the same as PD, and it doesn't take much more work for the author to do it.
Yeah, but finding people from 40 years ago is hard!! I can't even (easily) find people I know! Good luck hunting down Nori, Jacobi, Ummann, Jensen, Nageli, Wirth, Pemberton, etc. (Still no email response from him. No surprise there.)
Yes, if by that you (knowingly and unnecessarily) put your users in danger.
It's not knowingly and unnecessarily if you did your best to resolve it, is it??
You tried to resolved it => you know about it, i.e. knowingly.
You have alternatives (existing GPC; writing from scratch) => unnecessarily
Fear and 1% chance of being incorrect aren't the same as willful negligence.
"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.
Except in this case, we both get $10000. Nobody loses!
And thanks to copyright law, they get to take your $10000 as well (and leave you with lawyer and court costs).
Which is a waste of their own time and money, meaning very unlikely!
To cut this pointless discussion short, remember that we've all long agreed that we don't like the current laws.
Not really, you seemed to defend the law more than anybody.
So please stop arguing this -- we all agree, and we can't change them on this mailing list.
Clearly we don't all agree.
But you all seem to have no problem with inertia (doing nothing, accepting every bad decision). The only smart thing is to go your own way, which this whole topic is about. Unless you let yourself get railroaded by imaginary enemies (windmills).
If you want to ignore/break laws, take this somewhere else
No no no, why would I ignore or break a perfectly wonderful law that changes every time I turn around? That's the definition of perfect ("finished")!
we've made it very clear that the project is important enough (to us
... And to GCC and RMS, obviously! <evil grin>
and to some of its users)
Thought you didn't think it had any??
that we won't risk it by breaking the laws.
Which have served you oh so well over the years. (not)
Oh wait, copyright is the only legal hold GPL has over anybody. So yeah, all hallowed be that law, even if it is way too long a duration. But then if copyright disappeared too soon, the GPL would too, which would be bad for "free software", no? And you don't want that, apparently.
So if you have anything more to add, please restrict it to suggestions based on existing law.
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in Wind, Sand and Stars
(OMG, a copyrighted quotation! Oops, heheheh, except French version in Canada, haha! So insane, these stupid stupid laws.)
Am 18.08.2010 08:23, schrieb Rugxulo:
I suppose this alludes to my questioning of Pemberton's claim. But again, this is a bad example, since as Florian wrote, the statement is in the sources, whereas in the P4 source there is no such statement, as I pointed out.
FPC clearly didn't make it very obvious what exact GPL they were using, probably because nobody cared!!
I usually don't discuss FPC on the GPC mailing list but in this case I will. The statements in the compiler sources are very clear (taking e.g. the first source file in the compiler source directory) http://svn.freepascal.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/trunk/compiler/aasmbase.pas?rev...:
"This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version."
All compiler source files contain such a remark, so if somebody wants to reuse the sources he has just to look at the head of the source and he knows which license the source has (this is nowadays common practice btw). What else do you expect (this is a rhetoric question!)?
I'll mostly restrict my reply to pointing out the flaws in your arguments. Even if you have a valid point (which I doubt), it's up to you to build a *coherent* argument, instead of spreading random remarks and hoping that some of them will stick.
Rugxulo wrote:
I don't WANT to ignore or break laws, only some REALLY shouldn't or else CAN'T be obeyed without making someone's life 10 x more difficult for NO benefit.
We're not talking about "some" laws, but one specific one (possible copyright of P4), and this one can be easily obeyed (by not using it).
In fact, from what I can tell, Nageli is somehow involved as author in "pint.p", but he isn't listed in there. So even that is an omission that nobody felt important to include.
If so, this makes it even more problematic to use, rather than less. Again, arguing against your own point.
BTW, *I know you dislike unrelated comparisons but* [...] I know that's not proof, [...]
Enough said.
"based on existing law" ... for what, U.S. or Germany or ... ?
I answered this already. (Switzerland, if ETHZ.)
Unless you can prove that Pemberton is lying, I think it's safe to say that P4 is "public domain" (of some sort or similar)!
No, burden of proof is on those who claim it's PD.
The point was that it's nothing huge enough that they can act like it took them 20 years to write and is worth millions of dollars.
Where in copyright law does it say it needs to take them 20 years to write and be worth millions of dollars in order to have copyright?
Where do you draw the line????
Indeed, there is no sharp line (like often in law). But still there are things that are clearly here and some that are clearly there. Everyone agrees that a few thousand lines of code are clearly copyrighteable, and your "20 years" and "millions of dollars" are just a strawman.
Atari saying the yellow dot from Adventure is trademarked????
Why do you bring up trademarks now? (You know that copyright and trademarks are completely different laws, do you?)
I suppose this alludes to my questioning of Pemberton's claim. But again, this is a bad example, since as Florian wrote, the statement is in the sources, whereas in the P4 source there is no such statement, as I pointed out.
FPC clearly didn't make it very obvious what exact GPL they were using, probably because nobody cared!! To most people, free software / open source / GPL is probably "good enough" (all sounds the same).
I haven't seen a single project that uses the GPL, but doesn't state which version(s). Give me once concrete example or retreat your absurd claim!
We didn't invade their house and pilfer their silverware, just attempting to use what is already available (and without any mention of license anywhere except Pemberton's claim that it's PD, which for some odd reason is horribly dubious because he's such a devious liar, naturally).
Who said he was a liar? Are you misquoting me now?
If you don't think it's legally usable, then you are saying "it's not P.D.", which means you either thinks he's heavily incorrect or a liar.
Mistaken <> lying.
<sarcasm> Are you saying I misquoted you? Because I didn't, you liar! <sarcasm>
I *asked* where you got the thing about lying from.
Now you accuse me of lying, even if in a "<sarcasm>" tag.
By which you acknowledge that you had the copyright [...]
I only WISH it wasn't copyrightable. And yes, I'm aware that some dummy somewhere decided (for us!) that every little trivial thing is copyrightable. So I explicitly say, "I don't care", in case some jackass whines later.
As I said, you know you had the copyright and actively released it. Thanks for confirming me.
*You* published it *with* a PD notice. That's more than what we know about P4 so far.
We know (from PUG newsletters) that P4 was heavily spread around. There was a cost, but it was apparently from shipping and tape expenses. There was no mention about licenses.
As I said, they didn't publish it with a PD notice. Thanks for confirming me.
So who is it that doesn't care? Why is GPC 4.x so bugged? Why is it so hard? Why would a rewrite be reasonable at all then?
I addressed all this in my original article which started the discussion.
Which is really dumb, BTW, that an author / copyright holder can't do what they want with their own work just because some weird law disagrees.
I agree, but this is really the least problem. For practical purposes, it's basically the same as PD, and it doesn't take much more work for the author to do it.
Yeah, but finding people from 40 years ago is hard!!
Non sequitur. (The previous point was about how it's bad that authors in some countries can't release to PD if they wanted to, but could have used a free license instead. Your reply is how hard it is for users to find them after a long time -- which is independent of the question at hand; it would be equally hard to find them if you need a PD statement from them as for a FS statement.)
To cut this pointless discussion short, remember that we've all long agreed that we don't like the current laws.
Not really, you seemed to defend the law more than anybody.
Respecting the law <> liking the law.
why would I ignore or break a perfectly wonderful law that changes every time I turn around? That's the definition of perfect ("finished")!
Again you're arguing definitions of terms you brought up yourself. (The nice is you can read this whole discussion in the archive for proof. I didn't use the word "perfect" a single time in this copyright subthread -- you did so many times.) So keep arguing against yourself.
we've made it very clear that the project is important enough (to us
... And to GCC and RMS, obviously! <evil grin>
Irrelevant. (Noone claimed it would bring GCC or the FSF down.)
and to some of its users)
Thought you didn't think it had any??
Then read what I actually wrote instead of fantasizing. I explicitly addressed the users and asked them about new features, supporting its development etc.
that we won't risk it by breaking the laws.
Which have served you oh so well over the years. (not)
Irrelevant. Obeying laws isn't based on reciprocity.
But then if copyright disappeared too soon, the GPL would too, which would be bad for "free software", no?
If copyright disappeared, all software would be free software. Yes, the "copyleft" clause would also disappear which some would dislike. But that's a hypothetical scenario and irrelevant to the discussion.
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in Wind, Sand and Stars
(OMG, a copyrighted quotation!
Yes, so? You know there are laws and predecent which make (proper) citation legal. That doesn't imply that arbitrary use of copyrighted work is legel.
Frank
Hi again,
On 8/18/10, Frank Heckenbach ih8mj@fjf.gnu.de wrote:
Rugxulo wrote:
I don't WANT to ignore or break laws, only some REALLY shouldn't or else CAN'T be obeyed without making someone's life 10 x more difficult for NO benefit.
We're not talking about "some" laws, but one specific one (possible copyright of P4), and this one can be easily obeyed (by not using it).
Almost all laws can be obeyed by doing nothing. Don't like driving laws? Don't drive. Don't like income tax? Don't work. Don't like GPL? Don't release anything. Don't like software patents? Don't use computers.
I hope you see the futility of such a defeatist attitude.
In fact, from what I can tell, Nageli is somehow involved as author in "pint.p", but he isn't listed in there. So even that is an omission that nobody felt important to include.
If so, this makes it even more problematic to use, rather than less. Again, arguing against your own point.
No, the point was they weren't nitpicking to death. They didn't even necessarily worry about some details ("additional copyright holder"??). Hence license is probably even further from their minds.
"based on existing law" ... for what, U.S. or Germany or ... ?
I answered this already. (Switzerland, if ETHZ.)
Do other countries agree to respect Swiss law and vice versa?
(Apparently Polanski's 33-year-old warrant was valid enough for Swiss authorities to arrest him, but they must've changed their minds because they didn't extradite him to the U.S. like originally suggested. He's now a "free man!" I hate bringing up politics, but it just proves again that nobody can agree on anything!)
Atari saying the yellow dot from Adventure is trademarked????
Why do you bring up trademarks now? (You know that copyright and trademarks are completely different laws, do you?)
Because people are crazy and do crazy things, and the laws sometimes only help them to do that.
FPC clearly didn't make it very obvious what exact GPL they were using, probably because nobody cared!! To most people, free software / open source / GPL is probably "good enough" (all sounds the same).
I haven't seen a single project that uses the GPL, but doesn't state which version(s). Give me once concrete example or retreat your absurd claim!
"License
The packages and runtime library come under a modified Library GNU Public License to allow the use of static libraries when creating applications. The compiler source itself comes under the GNU General Public License. The sources for both the compiler and runtime library are available; the complete compiler is written in Pascal."
Notice that Florian has already said "it's mentioned in the source". My point was that it didn't seem to be mentioned in any of the other obvious places.
As I said, you know you had the copyright and actively released it. Thanks for confirming me.
I did not care one whit about legalities with it. The fact that I do or don't have exclusive copyright is legally moot. I didn't care at all, and I only "released it" via my own weak power in case someone was too stubborn or stupid to care otherwise.
We know (from PUG newsletters) that P4 was heavily spread around. There was a cost, but it was apparently from shipping and tape expenses. There was no mention about licenses.
As I said, they didn't publish it with a PD notice. Thanks for confirming me.
They also didn't say, "All hail Berne!" or "Copyright, don't distribute, pay us big monies for 70+ years, kthxbai!" So why are we not asking them explicitly what they want NOW instead of catering to a law that is irrelevant? I care more about concrete people than abstract law.
To cut this pointless discussion short, remember that we've all long agreed that we don't like the current laws.
Not really, you seemed to defend the law more than anybody.
Respecting the law <> liking the law.
If someone sued GPC for patent breach tomorrow, would you respect it? I doubt it. Nor should you, even if the "law" says you were wrong!
that we won't risk it by breaking the laws.
Which have served you oh so well over the years. (not)
Irrelevant. Obeying laws isn't based on reciprocity.
When the slavemaster beats his slave, do you think the victim asks for more?? Not if he has any sanity left!
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in Wind, Sand and Stars
(OMG, a copyrighted quotation!
Yes, so? You know there are laws and precedent which make (proper) citation legal. That doesn't imply that arbitrary use of copyrighted work is legal.
And you omitted to acknowledge that laws vary between countries. So it doesn't matter where it was written, only what the current law is in a particular place, for good or bad. This is why we cannot blindly kiss up to any laws because sometimes they don't even agree.
EDIT: Seems to matter more where it was published instead of originally written. Hence P4 would have probably been considered "published" in various countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Us_copyright_law#Public_domain
"Until the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988, the lack of a proper copyright notice would place an otherwise copyrightable work into the public domain, although for works published between January 1, 1978 and February 28, 1989, this could be prevented by registering the work with the Library of Congress within five years of publication. After March 1, 1989, an author's copyright in a work begins when it is fixed in a tangible form; neither publication nor registration is required, and a lack of a copyright notice does not place the work into the public domain."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_Literary...
"Copyright under the Berne Convention must be automatic; it is prohibited to require formal registration (note however that when the United States joined the Convention in 1988, they continued to make statutory damages and attorney's fees only available for registered works)"
"An author is normally not entitled a longer copyright abroad than at home, even if the laws abroad give a longer term. This is commonly known as "the rule of the shorter term". Not all countries have accepted this rule."
Hey guys,
I am trying very hard to follow this thread on the future of GPC development, but I am getting bogged down by seemingly endless debates on side issues.
I really would like to be able to focus on the pertinent issue (what we do about the GPC compiler development), but I can't tell which is which by the subject line.
May I respectfully propose that discussions about side issues be given a different subject so that one can delete them on sight?
Thanks very much for understanding.
Thank you, Chief! The question is, can we GC users help with the offer made for tasks 1 and/or 2?
Valid answers are: 1. No 2. Yes, I can provide $X and/or Y type of labor or facilities. 3. please clarify what how you propose to do this.
Can we get that very important question answered? Per the Chief, no other topics under this subject line, please.
Also, IMHO, per my experience with large compiler development and maintenance, I see little room for debate that the three most familiar should re-write the compiler in Pascal, so it can compile itself.
Willett Kempton Visible Software
On Aug 18, 2010, at 11:41 AM, Prof Abimbola Olowofoyeku (The African Chief) wrote:
Hey guys,
I am trying very hard to follow this thread on the future of GPC development, but I am getting bogged down by seemingly endless debates on side issues.
I really would like to be able to focus on the pertinent issue (what we do about the GPC compiler development), but I can't tell which is which by the subject line.
May I respectfully propose that discussions about side issues be given a different subject so that one can delete them on sight?
Thanks very much for understanding.
--
Best regards, The Chief
I'm willing to contribute personal time looking into the Pascal Database Connectivity (PDBC) concept.
I see that as happening after the compiler rewrite
I would like to request tho AIX and solaris support for the compiler.
-----Original Message----- From: gpc-owner@gnu.de [mailto:gpc-owner@gnu.de] On Behalf Of Willett Kempton Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2010 11:27 AM To: gpc@gnu.de Subject: Re: Quo vadis, GPC?
Thank you, Chief! The question is, can we GC users help with the offer made for tasks 1 and/or 2?
Valid answers are: 1. No 2. Yes, I can provide $X and/or Y type of labor or facilities. 3. please clarify what how you propose to do this.
Can we get that very important question answered? Per the Chief, no other topics under this subject line, please.
Also, IMHO, per my experience with large compiler development and maintenance, I see little room for debate that the three most familiar should re-write the compiler in Pascal, so it can compile itself.
Willett Kempton Visible Software
On Aug 18, 2010, at 11:41 AM, Prof Abimbola Olowofoyeku (The African Chief) wrote:
Hey guys,
I am trying very hard to follow this thread on the future of GPC development, but I am getting bogged down by seemingly endless debates on side issues.
I really would like to be able to focus on the pertinent issue (what
we
do about the GPC compiler development), but I can't tell which is
which
by the subject line.
May I respectfully propose that discussions about side issues be given
a
different subject so that one can delete them on sight?
Thanks very much for understanding.
--
Best regards, The Chief
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I can contribute $500 when our grant comes through in October.
I can contribute 5 hours per week of Pascal programming for six months once the front-end is done.
I think it's time to take this particular argument offline.
--------------------------| John L. Ries | Salford Systems | Phone: (619)543-8880 x107 | or (435)867-8885 | --------------------------|
On Wed, 18 Aug 2010, Rugxulo wrote:
Hi again,
On 8/18/10, Frank Heckenbach ih8mj@fjf.gnu.de wrote:
Rugxulo wrote:
I don't WANT to ignore or break laws, only some REALLY shouldn't or else CAN'T be obeyed without making someone's life 10 x more difficult for NO benefit.
We're not talking about "some" laws, but one specific one (possible copyright of P4), and this one can be easily obeyed (by not using it).
Almost all laws can be obeyed by doing nothing. Don't like driving laws? Don't drive. Don't like income tax? Don't work. Don't like GPL? Don't release anything. Don't like software patents? Don't use computers.
I hope you see the futility of such a defeatist attitude.
In fact, from what I can tell, Nageli is somehow involved as author in "pint.p", but he isn't listed in there. So even that is an omission that nobody felt important to include.
If so, this makes it even more problematic to use, rather than less. Again, arguing against your own point.
No, the point was they weren't nitpicking to death. They didn't even necessarily worry about some details ("additional copyright holder"??). Hence license is probably even further from their minds.
"based on existing law" ... for what, U.S. or Germany or ... ?
I answered this already. (Switzerland, if ETHZ.)
Do other countries agree to respect Swiss law and vice versa?
(Apparently Polanski's 33-year-old warrant was valid enough for Swiss authorities to arrest him, but they must've changed their minds because they didn't extradite him to the U.S. like originally suggested. He's now a "free man!" I hate bringing up politics, but it just proves again that nobody can agree on anything!)
Atari saying the yellow dot from Adventure is trademarked????
Why do you bring up trademarks now? (You know that copyright and trademarks are completely different laws, do you?)
Because people are crazy and do crazy things, and the laws sometimes only help them to do that.
FPC clearly didn't make it very obvious what exact GPL they were using, probably because nobody cared!! To most people, free software / open source / GPL is probably "good enough" (all sounds the same).
I haven't seen a single project that uses the GPL, but doesn't state which version(s). Give me once concrete example or retreat your absurd claim!
"License
The packages and runtime library come under a modified Library GNU Public License to allow the use of static libraries when creating applications. The compiler source itself comes under the GNU General Public License. The sources for both the compiler and runtime library are available; the complete compiler is written in Pascal."
Notice that Florian has already said "it's mentioned in the source". My point was that it didn't seem to be mentioned in any of the other obvious places.
As I said, you know you had the copyright and actively released it. Thanks for confirming me.
I did not care one whit about legalities with it. The fact that I do or don't have exclusive copyright is legally moot. I didn't care at all, and I only "released it" via my own weak power in case someone was too stubborn or stupid to care otherwise.
We know (from PUG newsletters) that P4 was heavily spread around. There was a cost, but it was apparently from shipping and tape expenses. There was no mention about licenses.
As I said, they didn't publish it with a PD notice. Thanks for confirming me.
They also didn't say, "All hail Berne!" or "Copyright, don't distribute, pay us big monies for 70+ years, kthxbai!" So why are we not asking them explicitly what they want NOW instead of catering to a law that is irrelevant? I care more about concrete people than abstract law.
To cut this pointless discussion short, remember that we've all long agreed that we don't like the current laws.
Not really, you seemed to defend the law more than anybody.
Respecting the law <> liking the law.
If someone sued GPC for patent breach tomorrow, would you respect it? I doubt it. Nor should you, even if the "law" says you were wrong!
that we won't risk it by breaking the laws.
Which have served you oh so well over the years. (not)
Irrelevant. Obeying laws isn't based on reciprocity.
When the slavemaster beats his slave, do you think the victim asks for more?? Not if he has any sanity left!
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in Wind, Sand and Stars
(OMG, a copyrighted quotation!
Yes, so? You know there are laws and precedent which make (proper) citation legal. That doesn't imply that arbitrary use of copyrighted work is legal.
And you omitted to acknowledge that laws vary between countries. So it doesn't matter where it was written, only what the current law is in a particular place, for good or bad. This is why we cannot blindly kiss up to any laws because sometimes they don't even agree.
EDIT: Seems to matter more where it was published instead of originally written. Hence P4 would have probably been considered "published" in various countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Us_copyright_law#Public_domain
"Until the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988, the lack of a proper copyright notice would place an otherwise copyrightable work into the public domain, although for works published between January 1, 1978 and February 28, 1989, this could be prevented by registering the work with the Library of Congress within five years of publication. After March 1, 1989, an author's copyright in a work begins when it is fixed in a tangible form; neither publication nor registration is required, and a lack of a copyright notice does not place the work into the public domain."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_Literary...
"Copyright under the Berne Convention must be automatic; it is prohibited to require formal registration (note however that when the United States joined the Convention in 1988, they continued to make statutory damages and attorney's fees only available for registered works)"
"An author is normally not entitled a longer copyright abroad than at home, even if the laws abroad give a longer term. This is commonly known as "the rule of the shorter term". Not all countries have accepted this rule."
John L. Ries wrote:
I think it's time to take this particular argument offline.
Agreed. Since Rugxulo again failed to make any coherent argument, as I asked of him, I'll reply by PM.
To sum it up: Yes, there are crazy laws. Yes, people do crazy things. Yes, countries are different. Yes, in your own project you can do what you want, ignore laws and face the consequences. But stop suggesting to others to ignore the laws, when you don't have to bear the consequences. Sure, it's easy to say go ahead, all easy, blah blah, and if something goes wrong (even if unlikely), you can say: "Oops, sorry you lost your business and all. Didn't expect this, bye."
Just one thing that addresses Florian as well.
Rugxulo wrote:
"License
The packages and runtime library come under a modified Library GNU Public License to allow the use of static libraries when creating applications. The compiler source itself comes under the GNU General Public License. The sources for both the compiler and runtime library are available; the complete compiler is written in Pascal."
Notice that Florian has already said "it's mentioned in the source". My point was that it didn't seem to be mentioned in any of the other obvious places.
While I agree that the license could perhaps be stated a bit more clearly (-> Florian?), both on the web site and in the binaries (unless I missed something), that doesn't imply, as you claimed: "... probably because nobody cared!! To most people, free software / open source / GPL is probably "good enough" (all sounds the same)." Florian's previous reply should have shown you that they do care. (So stop assuming about other people's intentions, especially when those people are here and told you already.)
Frank
Team
Does a similar eclipse plugin exist for gpc? Has anyone tried using this plugin for eclipse?
http://www.gavab.etsii.urjc.es/wiki/pascaline/
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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
Hi,
On 8/15/10, Frank Heckenbach ih8mj@fjf.gnu.de wrote:
Rugxulo wrote:
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.
BTW, I assume you're still loyal to GPL (and maybe GNU) even if (some?) GCC devs really haven't been that helpful directly. Obviously if you were to (help) rewrite GPC, it doesn't have to be GPL anything. You could use BSD, ISC, WTFPL, or whatever.
I blindly assume it's not anybody at FSF or GNU proper who is suggesting that GPC needs a rewrite. So they don't care. So all your worries (as is typical for a GNU project, a la GCC or Emacs) are probably unfounded. Note that XEmacs never worried as much as GNU Emacs about explicit permission / licensing in writing (legalese).
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?
I've e-mailed Pemberton. If he ever gets back to me (doubt it), he probably won't have any decent response or proof anyways. And that's IF he cares. And even then he could be wrong. So it's never going to be perfect, and it's pretty much never going to please you. It would be okay for me, but not for you (or GNU?). My joking suggestion about plugins is probably the only way to appease both of us, and I know that won't happen!
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.
Pemberton, who legally (I assume) wrote a book about P4, explicitly says on his website that it's "public domain". Not legally airtight, but that should be enough to not have a cow, man.
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.
My silly Befunge interpreter in Pascal is approx. 150 lines (or 25 if manually obfuscated and stripped of unnecessary crud). It's *extremely* trivial, IMHO, and I wrote it! It's released to "public domain" because:
1). I don't want to even think about licenses, they are annoying 2). I want it to be useful (well, nobody cares, but in theory ...) 3). I know it's insanely trivial and I'm a moron, so it's not worth a hill of beans
You really want to tell me that copyright applies there? Oh, and yes, I did publicly publish it, with PD notice, on the Pascal newsgroups, mostly because there were no posts except spam, *grumble grumble*. But I guess I might "change my mind" and try to enforce it when I'm (31+40=) 71, esp. since "public domain" isn't even possible in some countries (muahahahaha, profit, damages, whee!!). ;-))
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?)
Damn it, Frank, give me some credit here. I'm not THAT dumb! Sheesh.
Obviously if you don't think GPC is tenable (crufty C treenode bullcrap) and P5 is too murky, you're obvious choice is FPC (GPL'd), adding yet another dialect to it, e.g. ISO 10206. It's written in Pascal, which you already said GPC being written in C wasn't helpful to attract developers.
The point was that you hadn't really (openly) considered adapting FPC, at least from what I could tell. That's surely got to be easier than rewriting everything in C++. FPC isn't perfect, but it's good and equally as popular as GPC, maybe moreso.
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.
Right. BUT if GNU and GCC are to have separate language frontends, *somebody* has to care. If not RMS, then who? Doesn't matter if he uses Pascal, he should have some say in who does what, how they help others, etc. Okay, maybe that's not his job, but it should be somebody's.
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.
Well, yes, obviously, I mean, it would be easier if GPC was updated to work correctly with GCC 4.x instead of abandoning it completely. But why won't they help fix the bugs? Why don't they integrate your patches? Etc. etc. It just seems dumb (to me) that they would ignore you since GPC is quite good.
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.
How so? (Well, I was mostly joking anyways.)
- 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.)
You know, dare I call it a virtue, but most people don't live their life just to be legally pedantic and screw others over. So he might just "not think that way". Hence he probably didn't think it was a big deal! (Blindly guessing.)
What if he lost it?
Then try the second alternative. (It didn't say they were guaranteed to work, just possibilities.)
Note that this doesn't mean he's lying, just that he can't 100% prove it to you.
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.
Which is really dumb, BTW, that an author / copyright holder can't do what they want with their own work just because some weird law disagrees.
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.
The original (DOS, 386+ only) Befunge interpreter I used wasn't mine. I hacked it up, modified (shrank) 20% of it, fixed some bugs, ported to other assemblers from TASM. Neither of the two previous authors has a website or current e-mail now (from extensive searching, at least AFAICT), and I have no idea what licenses they used (if any, can't find mirrors of their work either [MCBC, specifically]). So I just call it PD. At least my changes are PD, and I kept the original for comparison.
Oh, and I joked with myself that aPACK isn't GPL friendly (after having read some erstwhile complaints years ago, it has no unpacker since it makes a custom stub for each binary), so I challenged myself to manually shrink it to below 1024 (from original 1280) without compression (mostly for fun, I wasn't really worried). And yes, then I rewrote it completely in REXX and Pascal "for fun" (and also "just in case" anybody complains, though the 982-byte one being forced to be GPL or whatever wouldn't hurt my feelings). Well, also DOSEMU x86-64 had a bug (now fixed in SVN) where the (self-modifying) 982-byte .COM wouldn't run, heh, which was annoying. (Also annoying that it was mostly 16-bit code but with 32-bit parts. So it was neither 8086 friendly nor fully 32-bit, which makes porting to other OSes harder.)
Moral of the story, it usually doesn't hurt to hack something, esp. if nobody complains. But it's safer to write your own. (And yes, that's tedious and error-prone and not always possible.)
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.
It's not knowingly and unnecessarily if you did your best to resolve it, is it?? It just seems dumb to be SO pessimistic and cynical that nothing good ever gets done just because "somebody somewhere might get mad at random".
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.
Please tell me how I'm such a horrible criminal for assuming that the authors don't care after 40 years, esp. when Pemberton says it's "public domain" and sources are freely available.
"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.
Except in this case, we both get $10000. Nobody loses! They get all our improvements. That's why software isn't really the same as a book or movie (which don't change and don't actually accomplish anything or solve any equations or whatever). Software is meant to be used, not to sit on a shelf (though I could vaguely imagine glancing at it like Beowulf, for historical curiosity, of course less so if I can't tell what it was actually meant to do).
On Sat, 14 Aug 2010 07:06:08 am Rugxulo wrote:
Hi,
On 8/13/10, Frank Heckenbach ih8mj@fjf.gnu.de wrote:
Rugxulo wrote:
You're right, good point, BUT copyright was never meant to be extended indefinitely.
Not indefinitely, but for a long time. Even the minimum terms of the Berne Convention are "almost forever", especially WRT software.
Software is different than movies or books or whatever. It shouldn't have 70+ years of copyright.
Neither should movies or books. The original copyright period in the US was 14 years, and authors could renew it for another 14 years. If I remember the facts correctly, less than 10% of authors took out copyright in the first place, and less than 5% of those bothered to renew. That means that for 95% of all copyrighted works, it wasn't worth filling out a form and paying a small fee in order to get 28 years' of copyright, let alone 70. To put it another way, the value to the author of the work after 14 years was essentially zero.
Copyright law is designed to protect the financial interests of the 0.01% of authors whose works are still valuable after 50 years, not the 90% for whom 10 years would be plenty of protection. I mean, pick up a copy of (say) the New York Times and choose a news article at random. A month after it is published, the financial worth of that article is likely going to be zero. And yet copyright law protects it for 70+ years. Ridiculous.
But we're not discussing what "should be", but what *is*, and the legal reality is that works like P5, even without a copyright notice, *are* copyrighted and will remain so for the foreseeable future. That means that using such a work puts you in legal jeopardy unless you get an explicit licence to use it.
If you, or somebody else, chooses to take that risk, then by all means do so. Just do so with full understanding that you *are* infringing copyright, and even if the author is happy to turn a blind eye, the copyright holder might not be.
As for the rest of the debate... well, it's too long, too rambling, the analogies you make are strange, and none of it really matters. We're not designing our perfect copyright law, nor are we documenting all the crazy things people do. We're trying to help Frank decide what the future of gpc should be.
-
Florian Klaempfl -
Florian Klämpfl
-
Frank Heckenbach -
Hiltibidal, Rob -
John L. Ries -
Jonas Maebe -
Kevan Hashemi -
Prof Abimbola Olowofoyeku (The African Chief) -
Rugxulo -
samiam＠moorecad.com -
Steven D'Aprano -
Willett Kempton