[Toybox] awk (Re: ps down, top to go)

[Rob Landley]

On 05/08/2016 09:54 PM, dmccunney wrote:
> On Sun, May 8, 2016 at 2:06 PM, Andy Chu <andychup at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Kernighan Awk (updated 2012) - 8K lines.  Lucent BSD? license.  Yacc grammar.
> 
> According to the README in the source
> 
> "/****************************************************************
> Copyright (C) Lucent Technologies 1997
> All Rights Reserved
> 
> Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and
> its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby
> granted, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all
> copies and that both that the copyright notice and this
> permission notice and warranty disclaimer appear in supporting
> documentation, and that the name Lucent Technologies or any of
> its entities not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining
> to distribution of the software without specific, written prior
> permission.
> 
> LUCENT DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE,
> INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS.
> IN NO EVENT SHALL LUCENT OR ANY OF ITS ENTITIES BE LIABLE FOR ANY
> SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
> WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER
> IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION,
> ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF
> THIS SOFTWARE.
> ****************************************************************/
> 
> This looks usable in Toybox to me.

Nope, the problem is "and that both that the copyright notice and this
permission notice and warranty disclaimer appear in supporting
documentation," as I explained here:

  http://landley.net/toybox/license.html#why

> Brian is a professor of computer science at Princeton these days.  The
> current source resides on his Princeton server, at
> http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~bwk/btl.mirror/index.html  He can be
> reached at bwk at cs.princeton.edu
> 
>> I'm guessing it's not possible for toybox to borrow code from it
>> because of the license, but I wonder about the Lucent license.  The
>> lexer is 582 lines of clean looking C code (it's Kernighan, so I guess
>> we all know his style :) ), which is not insignificant!
> 
> I asked Kernighan, and got the following reply:

Highly cool, but unless he's in a position to relicense it, we can't use it.

(I've actually been a plaintiff in license inforcement suits on multiple
continents, and even though the end result was me realizing it was a
horrible idea and not to do any more of it, another side effect is I
care more about fiddly little licensing details than any sane person would.)

Rob