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Bug#551763: License for FOCAL Interpreter



Daniel Moerner wrote:
On 12/08/2009 07:48 AM, Dave Pitts wrote:
If we're going to productize this program. I'm going to add files to the
tarball like ChangeLog, README, etc. Do you have any other
recommendations? Also, I'll start the version numbering at 1.0.0 for
this distribution work.

Well, I'd like to stress that I'm not trying to coerce you into doing
other work you weren't willing to do! This doesn't have to be very
complex at all, if you have a Changelog that would be nice. Before
packaging it for Debian I'll also make a brief man page for it, which I
will forward to you.

It's not coercion to get me to do something I've been meaning to do... That is to productize and clean some things up... Anyway, there's a new tarball on my site:

ftp://www.cozx.com/pub/langs/focal-1.0.0.tar.gz

Take a look and let me know if there is anything else we can add.

However, before doing that, I would need clarification on the
license. I
don't see one in the source. Under what conditions is the distribution
of your interpreter permitted?

Some good choices for free licenses may be the GPL or the 3-clause BSD
license, depending on your taste. Normally, Public Domain is not as
good
of a choice.[2]
Well, I did the initial coding, in Pascal, of Focal waaaay before
anybody thought of GPL or BSD licenses. I converted it to C in the early
1980s on Dec VAX running VMS. So, what would be the easiest way to set
it up? I signed GPL stuff for GCC and GAWK work that I've done in the
past.
Since it's your work, there should be no trouble. For the gcc work it
was a bit different because you would have had to sign over your
copyright to the FSF. In this case, you don't have to forfeit your
copyright. All you would have to do is choose a license that you like
and add it to the source tarball. This would state the license under
which you authorize redistribution of Focal as copyright holder of the
code of the interpreter.

OK, after looking at the GCC source, we have a COPYING file, that
contains the license, and comment blocks in the source like:

* FOCAL is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
* the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
* Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later
* version.
*
* FOCAL is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
* WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
* FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License
* for more details.
*
* You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
* along with FOCAL; see the file COPYING.  If not, write to the Free
* Software Foundation, 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA
* 02111-1307, USA.

Anything else?

That's the proper way to handle the license if it's under the GPL. Also
don't forget to add in a header to explain that you hold the copyright
since you started working on it.
I put in the focal.c file:

* Copyright (c) 1987-2009 Dave Pitts <dpitts@cozx.com>

If that will do.

I appreciate your cooperation on this; it's nice that other people will
be able to more easily benefit from your work.

No problems, glad to help.

Regards,
Daniel



--
Dave Pitts             PULLMAN: Travel and sleep in safety and comfort.
dpitts@cozx.com        My other RV IS a Pullman (Colorado Pine).
http://www.cozx.com




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