Re: License issue on tiny Javascript fragment

["Joe Smith" <unknown_kev_cat@hotmail.com>]

"Colin Turner" <ct@piglets.com> wrote in message 
[🔎] 498D8AF3.7030903@piglets.com">news:[🔎] 498D8AF3.7030903@piglets.com...
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> Hi All,
>
> I hope you can help and advise on this issue. I am packaging a web
> application for Debian, I am also the principal upstream author. The
> code is generally GPL v2 PHP. Over the years the project inherited, from
> a side project, a small fragment of Javascript that has no explicit 
> license.
>
> The problem I have is that the code is, like so much JS, sitting
> available, apparently for general consumption on several websites. I
> have been unable to acquire a license from any of the authors (no reply
> to emails) and the code is so astonishingly trivial it's hard to see how
> it could possibly be re-implemented without it being the same code with
> different variable names.
>
> Any guidance on what I should do? The functionality the code provides
> (counting and capping characters in textareas) is quite useful and
> losing it would probably cause dataloss in use of the application.
>
> CT.
>
> Code follows...
>
> // Use one function for multiple text areas on a page
> // Limit the number of characters per textarea



Here, is a clean room implmentation of a drop-in compatible (same argument 
order) function that will do the job.

function functionName(textObject,sizeRemainingObject,maxSize)
{
textObject.value=textObject.value.substring(0,maxSize);
sizeRemainingObject.value=maxSize-textObject.value.length;
}

Compared to the above it works the same, except that the second parameter 
will always be updated, to the number of characters remaining. Seeing as 
this appears to be intended to limit the size of text input in a textarea, 
while visually displaying the number of characters left in something else, 
that should be fine.

(Yes I've checked, and substring does the right thing here).

This new version is the very definition of a function too trivial to 
copyright, even the variable names and whitespaceing are as non-creative as 
possible. (Although I would recomend reformatting the whitespace used to be 
more readable).

Use it and be happy.

Joe Smith