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| 1 | + |
| 2 | + $FreeBSD: head/usr.bin/indent/README 105244 2002-10-16 13:58:39Z charnier $ |
| 3 | + |
| 4 | +This is the C indenter, it originally came from the University of Illinois |
| 5 | +via some distribution tape for PDP-11 Unix. It has subsequently been |
| 6 | +hacked upon by James Gosling @ CMU. It isn't very pretty, and really needs |
| 7 | +to be completely redone, but it is probably the nicest C pretty printer |
| 8 | +around. |
| 9 | + |
| 10 | +Further additions to provide "Kernel Normal Form" were contributed |
| 11 | +by the folks at Sun Microsystems. |
| 12 | + |
| 13 | +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ |
| 14 | +> From mnetor!yunexus!oz@uunet.UU.NET Wed Mar 9 15:30:55 1988 |
| 15 | +> Date: Tue, 8 Mar 88 18:36:25 EST |
| 16 | +> From: yunexus!oz@uunet.UU.NET (Ozan Yigit) |
| 17 | +> To: bostic@okeeffe.berkeley.edu |
| 18 | +> Cc: ccvaxa!willcox@uunet.UU.NET, jag@sun.com, rsalz@uunet.UU.NET |
| 19 | +> In-Reply-To: Keith Bostic's message of Tue, 16 Feb 88 16:09:06 PST |
| 20 | +> Subject: Re: Indent... |
| 21 | + |
| 22 | +Thank you for your response about indent. I was wrong in my original |
| 23 | +observation (or mis-observation :-). UCB did keep the Illinois |
| 24 | +copyright intact. |
| 25 | + |
| 26 | +The issue still is whether we can distribute indent, and if we can, which |
| 27 | +version. David Willcox (the author) states that: |
| 28 | + |
| 29 | +| Several people have asked me on what basis I claim that indent is in |
| 30 | +| the public domain. I knew I would be sorry I made that posting. |
| 31 | +| |
| 32 | +| Some history. Way back in 1976, the project I worked on at the |
| 33 | +| University of Illinois Center for Advanced Computation had a huge |
| 34 | +| battle about how to format C code. After about a week of fighting, I |
| 35 | +| got disgusted and wrote a program, which I called indent, to reformat C |
| 36 | +| code. It had a bunch of different options that would let you format |
| 37 | +| the output the way you liked. In particular, all of the different |
| 38 | +| formats being championed were supported. |
| 39 | +| |
| 40 | +| It was my first big C program. It was ugly. It wasn't designed, it |
| 41 | +| just sort of grew. But it pretty much worked, and it stopped most of |
| 42 | +| the fighting. |
| 43 | +| |
| 44 | +| As a matter of form, I included a University of Illinois Copyright |
| 45 | +| notice. However, my understanding was that, since the work was done |
| 46 | +| on an ARPA contract, it was in the public domain. |
| 47 | +| |
| 48 | +| Time passed. Some years later, indent showed up on one of the early |
| 49 | +| emacs distributions. |
| 50 | +| |
| 51 | +| Later still, someone from UC Berkeley called the UofI and asked if |
| 52 | +| indent was in the public domain. They wanted to include it in their |
| 53 | +| UNIX distributions, along with the emacs stuff. I was no longer at the |
| 54 | +| UofI, but Rob Kolstad, who was, asked me about it. I told him I didn't |
| 55 | +| care if they used it, and since then it has been on the BSD distributions. |
| 56 | +| |
| 57 | +| Somewhere along the way, several other unnamed people have had their |
| 58 | +| hands in it. It was converted to understand version 7 C. (The |
| 59 | +| original was version 6.) It was converted from its original filter |
| 60 | +| interface to its current "blow away the user's file" interface. |
| 61 | +| The $HOME/.indent.pro file parsing was added. Some more formatting |
| 62 | +| options were added. |
| 63 | +| |
| 64 | +| The source I have right now has two copyright notices. One is the |
| 65 | +| original from the UofI. One is from Berkeley. |
| 66 | +| |
| 67 | +| I am not a lawyer, and I certainly do not understand copyright law. As |
| 68 | +| far as I am concerned, the bulk of this program, everything covered by |
| 69 | +| the UofI copyright, is in the public domain, and worth every penny. |
| 70 | +| Berkeley's copyright probably should only cover their changes, and I |
| 71 | +| don't know their feelings about sending it out. |
| 72 | + |
| 73 | +In any case, there appears to be none at UofI to clarify/and change |
| 74 | +that copyright, but I am confident (based on the statements of its |
| 75 | +author) that the code, as it stands with its copyright, is |
| 76 | +distributable, and will not cause any legal problems. |
| 77 | + |
| 78 | +Hence, the issue reduces to *which* one to distribute through |
| 79 | +comp.sources.unix. I would suggest that with the permission of you |
| 80 | +folks (given that you have parts copyrighted), we distribute the 4.3 |
| 81 | +version of indent, which appears to be the most up-to-date version. I |
| 82 | +happen to have just about every known version of indent, including the |
| 83 | +very original submission from the author to a unix tape, later the |
| 84 | +G-Emacs version, any 4.n version, sun version and the Unipress |
| 85 | +version. I still think we should not have to "go-back-in-time" and |
| 86 | +re-do all the work you people have done. |
| 87 | + |
| 88 | +I hope to hear from you as to what you think about this. You may of |
| 89 | +course send 4.3 version to the moderator directly, or you can let me |
| 90 | +know of your permission, and I will send the sources, or you can let |
| 91 | +me know that 4.3 version is off-limits, in which case we would probably |
| 92 | +have to revert to an older version. One way or another, I hope to get |
| 93 | +a version of indent to comp.sources.unix. |
| 94 | + |
| 95 | +regards.. oz |
| 96 | + |
| 97 | +cc: ccvaxa!willcox |
| 98 | + sun.com!jar |
| 99 | + uunet!rsalz |
| 100 | + |
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