lcd4linux-devel

[Lcd4linux-devel] lcd4linux licensing issue

[Michael R. <re...@eu...>]

Hi Folks, especially Luk,

There's a licensing issue with the Evaluator, which I tried to solve 
months ago, but failed. As there raised a discussion on the lcdproc 
mailing list about such issues lately, this came to my mind again.

Luk, as you're a debian maintainer, and as debian seems to be very 
pedantic about licensing, I hope you can answer her (or at least know 
someone who can).

The files are evaluator.c and .h
The code based on something I found in the net, but was heavily modified 
by me (the original code could only handle numeric values, for example, 
and I did add lots of new levels and expressions.)


The original copyright statement reads:

/***************************************************************************
** 
    ** EE.C         Expression Evaluator 
        **
** AUTHOR:      Mark Morley 
   ** COPYRIGHT:   (c) 1992 by Mark Morley 
      ** DATE:        December 1991 
        **
** HISTORY:     Jan 1992 - Made it squash all command line arguments 
   **                         into one big long string.
**                       - It now can set/get VMS symbols as if they
**                         were variables.
**                       - Changed max variable name length from 5 to
**              Jun 1992 - Updated comments and docs                     **
**
** You are free to incorporate this code into your own works, even if it 
** is a commercial application.  However, you may not charge anyone else 
** for the use of this code!  If you intend to distribute your code, 
  ** I'd appreciate it if you left this message intact.  I'd like to 
    ** receive credit wherever it is appropriate.  Thanks! 
      **
** I don't promise that this code does what you think it does...         **
**
** Please mail any bug reports/fixes/enhancments to me at: 
  **      mo...@ca... 
     ** or 
        **      Mark Morley 
          **      3889 Mildred Street 
            **      Victoria, BC  Canada 
               **      V8Z 7G1 
                  **      (604) 479-7861 
                    **
***************************************************************************/

I could not reach the author, I tried several times (but per email only, 
not snail mail).

What should we do here?



TIA, Michael

-- 
Michael Reinelt                                   Tel: +43 676 3079941
Geisslergasse 4                                   Fax: +43 316  692343
A-8045 Graz, Austria                          e-mail: re...@eu...

Re: [Lcd4linux-devel] lcd4linux licensing issue

[Luk C. <in...@us...>]

Michael Reinelt wrote:
> Hi Folks, especially Luk,

Hi

> Luk, as you're a debian maintainer, and as debian seems to be very 
> pedantic about licensing, I hope you can answer her (or at least know 
> someone who can).

I can surely try ;-)

> The files are evaluator.c and .h
> The code based on something I found in the net, but was heavily modified 
> by me (the original code could only handle numeric values, for example, 
> and I did add lots of new levels and expressions.)
> 
> 
> The original copyright statement reads:
> 
> /*************************************************************************** 
> 
> **    ** EE.C         Expression Evaluator        **
> ** AUTHOR:      Mark Morley   ** COPYRIGHT:   (c) 1992 by Mark Morley 
>      ** DATE:        December 1991        **
> ** HISTORY:     Jan 1992 - Made it squash all command line arguments   
> **                         into one big long string.
> **                       - It now can set/get VMS symbols as if they
> **                         were variables.
> **                       - Changed max variable name length from 5 to
> **              Jun 1992 - Updated comments and docs                     **
> **
> ** You are free to incorporate this code into your own works, even if it 
> ** is a commercial application.  However, you may not charge anyone else 
> ** for the use of this code!  If you intend to distribute your code,  ** 
> I'd appreciate it if you left this message intact.  I'd like to    ** 
> receive credit wherever it is appropriate.  Thanks!      **
> ** I don't promise that this code does what you think it does...         **
> **
> ** Please mail any bug reports/fixes/enhancments to me at:  **      
> mo...@ca...     ** or        **      Mark Morley          
> **      3889 Mildred Street            **      Victoria, BC  Canada 
>               **      V8Z 7G1                  **      (604) 479-7861 
>                    **
> ***************************************************************************/ 

The only problem I spot is the part "However, you may not charge anyone 
else for the use of this code!"

> I could not reach the author, I tried several times (but per email only, 
> not snail mail).
> 
> What should we do here?

There are many possibilities:

- non-free
- contrib (depend on Evaluator) and (changed) Evaluator in non-free
- main either by removing Evaluator (possibly rewrite the code from 
scratch) or by making Evaluator free (contact the author by whatever 
means to change license, but I don't think he will change it as the 
license is pretty clear and you haven't got an answer by e-mail :-()

Cheers

Luk

Re: [Lcd4linux-devel] lcd4linux licensing issue

[Xavier V. <xav...@fr...>]

Hi Michael, hi Luk, all list.

> > The files are evaluator.c and .h
> > The code based on something I found in the net, but was heavily modified 
> > by me (the original code could only handle numeric values, for example, 
> > and I did add lots of new levels and expressions.
> > [...] 
> The only problem I spot is the part "However, you may not charge anyone 
> else for the use of this code!"
Yes, this is not compatible with the GPL :/

> > I could not reach the author, I tried several times (but per email only, 
> > not snail mail).
> > What should we do here?
> There are many possibilities:
> - non-free
> - contrib (depend on Evaluator) and (changed) Evaluator in non-free
I don't think we should have this discussion if this is the only
solution. non-free is not used by everybody (a large mass think non-free
contains closed-source programs only). It's not worth the price to go to
non-free.

> - main either by removing Evaluator (possibly rewrite the code from 
> scratch) or by making Evaluator free (contact the author by whatever 
> means to change license, but I don't think he will change it as the 
> license is pretty clear and you haven't got an answer by e-mail :-()
Michael, you should try to send him a snail mail, stating our
  situation, with all the possible means to contact you back (email,
 mail, phone, fax, ...).
I think he didn't think that someday a little Michi would find his code
and include it in lcd4linux. I don't think he has interest of keeping
this non-comercial clause. Maybe he changed his email, did you google
for his name ?

Other thing Luk : isn't (604) 479-7861 a phone number in Canada ?

Bye !
-- 
Xavier VELLO <xav...@fr...>

Re: [Lcd4linux-devel] lcd4linux licensing issue

[Michael R. <re...@eu...>]

Hi there,

> The only problem I spot is the part "However, you may not charge anyone 
> else for the use of this code!"
Too bad, but there's a positive aspect, too (see later)

> There are many possibilities:
> 
> - non-free
> - contrib (depend on Evaluator) and (changed) Evaluator in non-free
> - main either by removing Evaluator (possibly rewrite the code from 
> scratch) or by making Evaluator free (contact the author by whatever 
> means to change license, but I don't think he will change it as the 
> license is pretty clear and you haven't got an answer by e-mail :-()
I like none of them.

I will do a rewrite from scratch, and optimize the whole thing so that it
- uses our Namespace::delimiter
- does a pre-compile of the expression and stores it as a tree

I found a quite old code from myself which does basically the above. 
I'll go for it this weekend.


bye, Michael

-- 
Michael Reinelt                                   Tel: +43 676 3079941
Geisslergasse 4                                   Fax: +43 316  692343
A-8045 Graz, Austria                          e-mail: re...@eu...

Re: [Lcd4linux-devel] lcd4linux licensing issue

[Xavier V. <xav...@fr...>]

> Hello Michael !

> I will do a rewrite from scratch, and optimize the whole thing so that it
> - uses our Namespace::delimiter
> - does a pre-compile of the expression and stores it as a tree
Which expression do you want to pre-compile ? I don't understand this one !

Bye !
-- 
Xavier VELLO <xav...@fr...>

Re: [Lcd4linux-devel] lcd4linux licensing issue

[Martin H. <ma...@he...>]

Hi Xavier,

>>I will do a rewrite from scratch, and optimize the whole thing so that it
>>- uses our Namespace::delimiter
>>- does a pre-compile of the expression and stores it as a tree
> 
> Which expression do you want to pre-compile ? I don't understand this one !
I'm not sure if this is a simple language problem (possible, since most 
here are not native speakers to English), or something else - but to me, 
"expression" is a term very commonly used when building compilers or 
parsers.

In specific, the "expression" Michael was referring to was the different 
strings given to the evaluator to evaluate (actually, the first 
parameter of the Eval function, which is even called "expression"). So, 
in short, anything specified in the config as "expression", 
"expression2", "prefix" or "postfix" (maybe some others that I haven't 
come across yet).

The idea is to avoid having to re-parse a string over and over again, 
when it already has been parsed at an ealier point in time. By saving 
the "pre-compiled" version, and re-using that one, one saves time (CPU 
cycles). This is a very common thing to do, and can result in 
significant reduction of CPU usage, when the expressions used get more 
complicated (this concept is heavily used for "prepared statements" in 
Databases, for example, since parsing complex SQL statements and running 
the optimizer on that can be _rather_ expensive).

HTH

Martin