Re: Authorship, Licensing, Copyright...

[Bron G. <br...@ne...>]

On Wed, Jul 19, 2000 at 01:55:20AM -0500, Mike808 wrote:
> Bron Gondwana wrote:
> > There's very much two schools of thought here - but once we start splitting
> > functionality into separate files, we'll need to either put all the docs
> > in one or do messy include stuff (I'm not sure how POD handles that)
> 
> I very much believe that each separate source file should stand alone.
> That means intact with embedded copyright/ownership/licensing/version
> info. That also means included POD. No module should be distributed 
> without POD. That doesn't mean that SomeModule.pm can't have a 
> SomeModule.pod to go along with it. Both should carry copyright 
> and licensing info within, the POD should have it both source-visible
> and perldoc visible.

I don't know what skipping POD/comments does to loadup times.. probably
not much, but where many files are grouped together as a set, I believe
a better solution is to say "this file is part of a set and belongs with
$OTHER_FILES, and may not be redistributed without $LICENCE and
$OTHER_FILES".  Requiring that the entire licence and changelog be in
modules that may be parsed many times a second seems rather silly to me.

>
> This is precisely to prevent 'out-of-context' issues due to our
> omission to exert these claims and rights. BTW, we are all in the
> good ole US of A, right? (Besides Geert and Egon, I know).

Damn, I knew I should be using my netizen.com.au addresses.  Um, that
would be a no.  Good old Oz-trailyer.

> Then if we need a cookbook or tutorial or overall POD doc, then we 
> just write something like a 'XSLT-cookbook.pm' or XSLT-tutorial.pm' 
> that only contains POD, so the 'disjoint docset' isn't an issue.

That's true, and probably a good point - but I don't think every file
has to stand alone.

> I'm not sure what you mean by 'messy include stuff'. I see nothing
> wrong with a 'SEE ALSO' section and a reference to the other PODs.
> This would be consistent with CORE Perl perldocs and pretty much all
> CPAN modules.

True, but something like a "supported functionality" section should be
in the main manpage, even though the functionality itself may be
documented in subpages.  CGI.pm is a bad case of excessive single-file
and large manpageness IMHO, but having many 2-3 page manpages is also
very annoying to those of us who like printing a copy of the manpage
and hilighter marking it if we're using the module a lot.

> On the licensing, I'm fine with Geert and Egon's (and mine)
> use of 'same terms as Perl itself' message.
> e.g.
> # This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
> # modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

That seems fairly standard with Perl.

> As for copyright, well, technically, if I write it, I own the
> copyright unless I explicitly transfer it to someone/thing else.
> Hence a clear assignment of copyright to contributed work, like
> the Apache group does. I'll see if I can borrow some relevant
> text that isn't too lengthy and complicated.

If you're modifying someone else's original work, then it starts
getting messier, but yes - copyright is a messy issue.  If you
can summarise what the Apache group does, that would be fantastic.

> I've got some major changes to the 1.8.6.4 on the 
> cpan-0_2x-maint tree. I know there's a .5 I need to merge.
> 
> I found some missing '=' assignments buried in the code. Weird.
> Fixed. e.g. my $var some_function($a,$b,$c); # Missing '='???

The stuff I submitted during the 0.24 build was very messy..
courtesy of a slow link and my extreme tiredness at the time.

If you replace the code in there with the copy from 0.24 release
they missing ='s will all be fixed :)

> Also, I noticed some speedups with our hash accesses that we
> were wasting time doing copy-on-write operations. NOT Fixed.
> Noted with a comment.
> 
> Also, did some speedups by moving indirect references to lexicals.
> I'm about halfway through the code now.

Fantastic :)  I'll be throwing more work that way soon - but I have
spec writing to do for the rest of this week.  Grr..

-- 
Bron ( at least I seem to have a job and a passable salary )