Peter Bex wrote:
On Thu, Dec 14, 2006 at 05:59:23AM -0800, Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
I don't really understand this part.
The point is, you can use LGPL code as "starter code," and
incrementally transform it, until you have only BSD code. The
incrementality is important. Some licenses will prevent you from
doing that.
I didn't know that was allowed.
Of course it's allowed. Delete code from the LGPL library. Add *your
own* equivalent functionality somewhere else in your app, either above
the LGPL library, or beside it. You just can't use their code, you have
to write your own from scratch. But you could do this gradually over a
long period of time, using the LGPL library as scaffolding that gets
gradually whittled down.
Also, I think the legal issues would be complicated.
No, it is not complicated at all. The only way it can be complicated,
is if you're not writing your own new BSD code, but stealing the LGPL
code. Clearly, the LGPL exists so that it can be used in conjunction
with proprietary licensed code. No court is going to say, "Well you
have to implement that functionality in the LGPL library, because they
were there first and it looked like a good infrastructure to do it
with." You can throw out 99% of a LGPL library if you want to, and just
keep one function. You're still going to have to provide a .dll for
that 1 function, and its source code. There is no restriction in a LGPL
that you must somehow "keep the integrity and functionality of the work."
Some other licenses do have such restrictions. That's why I said, LGPL
is an acceptable "scaffolding" license as compared to other licenses.
Think USL vs. BSDi and the recent SCO vs. IBM. Where does
the code come from, and who is to know for sure?
I wouldn't want to go anywhere near that.
Not the same issue. Here, the issue is proprietary code polluting BSD
code. Whereas the FSF is *never* going to sue anyone for modifying LGPL
code. That's what they *want* people to do, it's what they *believe*
in. They're only gonna sue if you copy LGPL code and don't license it LGPL.
Also, in practice, you really think Chicken is a legal target? Hardly.
Even Linux was gazonkers popular for many years before it was worth
someone's time to try to sue over license pollution. By that time, I
assure you, any crappy LGPL contract starter code will have long since
been whittled away beyond recognition.
An breach of contract means either your design has failed or the caller or
callee contains a bug in the code. You don't "deal with errors", you
let it crash and burn, then you inspect the pieces to see what went
wrong. It's not just an exception that signals "something went wrong,
I can't perform this operation" to the caller, it's an actual fault in
the code.
How do you know you've specified it right? I'd say, you don't, until it
has failed a few times. Which gets back to the question of changing
designs.
Oops. The problem, in my point of view, is that you Unix guys are
always setting up mailing lists to be "Reply To Sender."
"you Unix guys"? Could you please use a milder tone? We're all Chicken
users here :)
I was ribbing Felix as the listowner, and YES he is a Unix guy, not a
Windows guy. And as far as I'm concerned, if your Chicken build isn't
MinGW, Cygwin, or MSVC, you're a Unix guy. Well, you could be a MacOS
guy I suppose, which from a UI standpoint is a helluva lot better than
being a Unix guy.
Actually, I have set up mutt to reply to the list. It also sets the
proper headers so other threaded clients can see the mail is a reply
to the original mail.
I wonder if Thunderbird can be so clever. Well, looks like it will be
soon, but not now.
http://open.nit.ca/wiki/index.php?page=ReplyToListThunderbirdExtension
Starting a flamewar about Unix vs. Windows is not appropriate here.
So don't. I didn't. That is, I couldn't possibly expect anyone to take
this stuff so seriously.
This is all religion about how mail
clients should be implemented. Unixers go for the traditions
peculiar to their historical mail clients. Windozers go for
what makes sense to the common man; "Reply" means "send it back to
where it came from." We subscribe to a list, things come from the
list, we send things back to the list.
A nice enough idea in theory, but this won't always work. Lots of lists
just leave the original sender in the From header, so a naive non
list-aware mailclient's 'reply' function would ignore the list entirely.
Ah well. Technology sucks, and then you die.
I will wager, furthermore, that a default of Reply-To-Author is a
relic of a time when net curmudgeons didn't want you "wasting
everyone's time" with your idle chit-chat. Force you to think about
replying to the entire group, the entire world community, all the
resources wasted on all those servers, oh my!
We were having a nice discussion about testing and contracts in Chicken.
Please don't spoil that by allowing it to degenerate into a Windows/Unix
flame fest.
Methinks thou dost protest too much!
PS I hope I haven't offended. I just would like this list to remain
friendly.
I find the easiest way to do that, is not to look for an offense.
Cheers,
Brandon Van Every
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