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1 | This is the C indenter, it originally came from the University of Illinois |
2 | via some distribution tape for PDP-11 Unix. It has subsequently been | |
3 | hacked upon by James Gosling @ CMU. It isn't very pretty, and really needs | |
4 | to be completely redone, but it is probably the nicest C pretty printer | |
5 | around. | |
6 | ||
7 | Further additions to provide "Kernel Normal Form" were contributed | |
8 | by the folks at Sun Microsystems. | |
9 | ||
10 | ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ | |
11 | > From mnetor!yunexus!oz@uunet.UU.NET Wed Mar 9 15:30:55 1988 | |
12 | > Date: Tue, 8 Mar 88 18:36:25 EST | |
13 | > From: yunexus!oz@uunet.UU.NET (Ozan Yigit) | |
14 | > To: bostic@okeeffe.berkeley.edu | |
15 | > Cc: ccvaxa!willcox@uunet.UU.NET, jag@sun.com, rsalz@uunet.UU.NET | |
16 | > In-Reply-To: Keith Bostic's message of Tue, 16 Feb 88 16:09:06 PST | |
17 | > Subject: Re: Indent... | |
18 | ||
19 | Thank you for your response about indent. I was wrong in my original | |
20 | observation (or mis-observation :-). UCB did keep the Illinois | |
21 | copyright intact. | |
22 | ||
23 | The issue still is whether we can distribute indent, and if we can, which | |
24 | version. David Willcox (the author) states that: | |
25 | ||
26 | | Several people have asked me on what basis I claim that indent is in | |
27 | | the public domain. I knew I would be sorry I made that posting. | |
28 | | | |
29 | | Some history. Way back in 1976, the project I worked on at the | |
30 | | University of Illinois Center for Advanced Computation had a huge | |
31 | | battle about how to format C code. After about a week of fighting, I | |
32 | | got disgusted and wrote a program, which I called indent, to reformat C | |
33 | | code. It had a bunch of different options that would let you format | |
34 | | the output the way you liked. In particular, all of the different | |
35 | | formats being championed were supported. | |
36 | | | |
37 | | It was my first big C program. It was ugly. It wasn't designed, it | |
38 | | just sort of grew. But it pretty much worked, and it stopped most of | |
39 | | the fighting. | |
40 | | | |
41 | | As a matter of form, I included a University of Illinois Copyright | |
42 | | notice. However, my understanding was that, since the work was done | |
43 | | on an ARPA contract, it was in the public domain. | |
44 | | | |
45 | | Time passed. Some years later, indent showed up on one of the early | |
46 | | emacs distributions. | |
47 | | | |
48 | | Later still, someone from UC Berlekey called the UofI and asked if | |
49 | | indent was in the public domain. They wanted to include it in their | |
50 | | UNIX distributions, along with the emacs stuff. I was no longer at the | |
51 | | UofI, but Rob Kolstad, who was, asked me about it. I told him I didn't | |
52 | | care if they used it, and since then it has been on the BSD distributions. | |
53 | | | |
54 | | Somewhere along the way, several other unnamed people have had their | |
55 | | hands in it. It was converted to understand version 7 C. (The | |
56 | | original was version 6.) It was converted from its original filter | |
57 | | interface to its current "blow away the user's file" interface. | |
58 | | The $HOME/.indent.pro file parsing was added. Some more formatting | |
59 | | options were added. | |
60 | | | |
61 | | The source I have right now has two copyright notices. One is the | |
62 | | original from the UofI. One is from Berkeley. | |
63 | | | |
64 | | I am not a lawyer, and I certainly do not understand copyright law. As | |
65 | | far as I am concerned, the bulk of this program, everything covered by | |
66 | | the UofI copyright, is in the public domain, and worth every penny. | |
67 | | Berkeley's copyright probably should only cover their changes, and I | |
68 | | don't know their feelings about sending it out. | |
69 | ||
70 | In any case, there appears to be noone at UofI to clarify/and change | |
71 | that copyright, but I am confident (based on the statements of its | |
72 | author) that the code, as it stands with its copyright, is | |
73 | distributable, and will not cause any legal problems. | |
74 | ||
75 | Hence, the issue reduces to *which* one to distribute through | |
76 | comp.sources.unix. I would suggest that with the permission of you | |
77 | folks (given that you have parts copyrighted), we distribute the 4.3 | |
78 | version of indent, which appears to be the most up-to-date version. I | |
79 | happen to have just about every known version of indent, including the | |
80 | very original submission from the author to a unix tape, later the | |
81 | G-Emacs version, any 4.n version, sun version and the Unipress | |
82 | version. I still think we should not have to "go-back-in-time" and | |
83 | re-do all the work you people have done. | |
84 | ||
85 | I hope to hear from you as to what you think about this. You may of | |
86 | course send 4.3 version to the moderator directly, or you can let me | |
87 | know of your permission, and I will send the sources, or you can let | |
88 | me know that 4.3 version is off-limits, in which case we would probably | |
89 | have to revert to an older version. One way or another, I hope to get | |
90 | a version of indent to comp.sources.unix. | |
91 | ||
92 | regards.. oz | |
93 | ||
94 | cc: ccvaxa!willcox | |
95 | sun.com!jar | |
96 | uunet!rsalz | |
97 |