Re: mindterm copyright (more opensslish stuff)

[Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>]

Branden Robinson wrote:
> I wonder if it possible to reconstruct the existing mindterm code base
> from all the known DFSG-free code using a recipe.  This recipe could
> then be handed to the FTP admins.

Only if you have an automatic C to java translator program..

An example closer to home for you is mindterm's terminal emulator,
derived from xterm. This kind of thing may easily be a verbatim
transcription of xterm's C to java (not that I've checked);

  public void keyHandler(int virtualKey, int modifiers) {
    String specialKey = null;
    String prefix = "";
    switch(virtualKey) {
    case KeyEvent.VK_UP:
    case KeyEvent.VK_DOWN:
    case KeyEvent.VK_RIGHT:
    case KeyEvent.VK_LEFT:
      if(cursorKeysMode)
        prefix = replyTypes[R_SS3];
      else
        prefix = replyTypes[R_CSI];
      specialKey = mapSpecialKeys(virtualKey, modifiers);
      break;

But all of the glue wrapping this up into a java class is fairly unlike
C.

> Or perhaps the consensus of debian-legal is good enough for the FTP
> team; it has been in the past.

Continuing with the X analogy, part of mindterm was written by someone
reading the sources to X11R6 back in the mid-ninties. Back then parts of
X were free, and parts perhaps were not (like those fonts you had to
remove a while ago, or whatever) Then a while ago someone (the Open
Group) tried to take X wholly proprietary. Of course that didn't last as
xfree86 became the de-facto X implementaton and remained free.

Now, if mindterm's TerminalXTerm.java had something at the top which read,

/*
 * Hey, I wrote this looking at xterm.c in X version so and so, and now
 * the Open Group has relicensed it under a new, more restrictive license
 * which you might want to look into, and which I attach below for correctness.
 */

I think we'd all consider that a load of bull and assume that the
license that applied to the version of xterm.c that was used to write
the java code applied also to the java code, and that whatever
shenanigans the Open Group pulled later were irrelevant. 

I hope that we would also not consider that just because the verison of X
that was used as a reference for writing the java code had certian non-free
bits well separated from xterm.c, that this somehow tainted the license.

I think that's a pretty good analogy really.

	X 	       == ssh
	Xfree86        == openssh
	xterm.c        == dsa.c
	non-free fonts == most of the rest of the old ssh 
	                  (a matter of degree here)
	Open Group     == openssl authors

-- 
see shy jo