Hello, On Tue, 01 Mar 2011 13:55:57 +0100 Simon Josefsson <si...@josefsson.org> wrote:
> The 'idn' tool is licensed under GPLv3 which says: > > If the program does terminal interaction, make it output a short > notice like this when it starts in an interactive mode: > > <program> Copyright (C) <year> <name of author> > This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type > `show w'. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute > it under certain conditions; type `show c' for details. > > The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the > appropriate parts of the General Public License. Of course, your > program's commands might be different; for a GUI interface, you > would use an "about box". > > The 'idn' tool does not print exactly that text, but I believe the > spirit is the same. Possibly the text printed by 'idn' should be > better aligned with GPLv3, but that would be a separate issue. But when I run idn as `idn ัะตัั`, for example, it doesn't do any terminal interaction, but the output is a bit too verbose. > 1) Printing a blurb is intentional and suggested by the GPLv3. > 2) The behaviour can easily be toggled by --quiet. > 3) I don't see what problem is caused by this. > 4) Many other tools behave the same (gdb, bc) and consistency is > good. > 5) Having a --quiet parameter that doesn't do anything is confusing. GPLv3 requires that for interactive mode, not for non-interactive one. Running idn with a parameter isn't using it in its interactive more Many other tools like host or whois don't do that. And most possibly the 'blurb' is not what user wants from this program, but the final line only, and printing the copyleft notice makes it difficult to spot it. -- WBR, Andrew
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