ref: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#14 SEQUENCE NUMBERS http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#19 Source maintenance was Re: SEQUENCE NUMBERS http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#21 Source maintenance was Re: SEQUENCE NUMBERS
for some additional drift, old history about requiring source for application distribution on the internal network http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet ***** Extract from VM Newsletter 5 ***** V M Newsletter Issue 5 ... May 1977 Welcome to the fifth issue of the newsletter. E D I T O R I A L I recently received a contribution for the newsletter which, in addition to the usual description, mentioned that no source code for the item described would be made available. I have withheld its publication for the time being. I feel that, in the absence of a very good reason to the contrary, contributors should always make the source for their programs available to the requesters. Aside from the fact that in many cases it may be essential for the proper installation of a program to have the source, it seems to me a matter of courtesy that it should be provided. I would like to establish a policy for the newsletter regarding this question, but I solicit your opinion to help me do so. ***** Extract from VM Newsletter 6 ***** V M Newsletter Issue 6 ... June 1977 Welcome to the sixth issue of the newsletter. The response to the first editorial in the last issue is quite satisfying. Most of you feel that source should, in general, be made available. But a number of readers pointed out some other considerations, most of which seem to me to be valid. Among them: * Sometimes the source is really not available; it seems unreasonable to lose what might be an otherwise valuable contribution and of use to someone in spite of the lack of source. * Sometimes the source is really part of, or related to, some product being developed and the source can't be made available until the corresponding product is announced or shipped. This was the situation with the contribution which prompted the editorial. * When the program is under continuing development, it is a considerable burden to the developer to provide a complete set of source. In this situation, some people felt, at least idle requests for the source code should be discouraged. Furthermore, there appears to be a conflict between letting many early versions of the program propagate widely, and getting a number of early "guinea-pig" users. * When the contribution is the installation of some OS-based processor on CMS, it is inappropriate to distribute the source of the entire processor. In these cases, however, the source for any interface and installation programs should be provided. * There are a few unusual cases in which the integrity of a lot of data depends on the integrity of programs which access or maintain it. A specific example of this is a file system which was developed at Yorktown. In such cases, a small bug could be introduced by someone casually changing the program, and not have its effects realized until long afterwards. In cases like this, perhaps the burden is on the requester to demonstrate that providing the source will not lead to a bad situation. The policy I have decided to implement for the newsletter is to publish any contribution, but to require that the contributor state explicitly that the source is not available, and that he explain why this is the case.
