bin/98911: getopt(1): getopt.c license issue

Jason McIntyre jmc at kerhand.co.uk
Mon May 5 05:30:06 UTC 2008


The following reply was made to PR bin/98911; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Jason McIntyre <jmc at kerhand.co.uk>
To: Bruce Cran <bruce at cran.org.uk>
Cc: bug-followup at FreeBSD.org
Subject: Re: bin/98911: getopt(1): getopt.c license issue
Date: Mon, 5 May 2008 06:26:46 +0059

 On Sun, May 04, 2008 at 10:50:05PM +0100, Bruce Cran wrote:
 > Since this issue was raised in June 2006 NetBSD added a header at the 
 > top of getopt.c:
 > 
 > /*
 >  * This material, written by Henry Spencer, was released by him
 >  * into the public domain and is thus not subject to any copyright.
 >  */
 > 
 > The FreeBSD man page for getopt(1) does record Henry as the author, but 
 > the README in src/usr.bin/getopt is possibly misleading.  The original 
 > message can be seen through Google Groups at 
 > http://groups.google.com/group/mod.std.unix/msg/4ebaa418597b4ff0 and it 
 > appears clear that Ian Darwin isn't claiming he wrote getopt but that 
 > he'd found it and was posting a copy of it for others to see.  In 
 > particular, note that the History section remained intact and attributed 
 > Henry as the original author.
 > 
 
 i see your point. however the README does not exactly do a great job of
 clarifying the license - it's hard to read it and not conclude ian
 wasn;t the author.
 
 wouldn;t it be clearer to put the public domain blurb on these files?
 
 jmc


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