Who can help with the GPL v3 effort?

[Ben Wing]

On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 1:00 PM, Jerry James <james at xemacs.org> wrote:
> The goal is in sight and ... and .. and I can't quite get us there.
> I'm very sorry.  I'm back to working massive overtime at work.  It's a
> high-stakes project; there is a LOT of money riding on this, and I'm
> the sole developer, so I work what hours I have to work to get the job
> done.  This is going to go on for at least a few more weeks, and
> possibly as long as a couple of months.
>
> I know Ben has been working on some stuff, but I'm not at all clear on
> what he has accomplished.  This is the last state of my list.  Who can
> help finish this list off so we can flip the GPL v3 switch?
>
> Problem files:
> 1. etc/editclient.sh
> 2. etc/emacskeys.sco: I think we should delete this.
> 3. etc/emacsstrs.sco: Ditto.
> 4. man/cl.texi: License requires us to have the same GPL section as the
>   original, which didn't have a GPL section (as near as I can tell).
> 5. netinstall/reginfo.h: Waiting to hear from Volker Zell or someone else at
>   Cygwin about whether we can just delete the entire netinstall directory.
> 6. netinstall/version.pl: Ditto
> 7. tests/Dnd/droptest.el
> 8. tests/Dnd/droptest.sh
>
> Problem files that have equivalents in GPL v3 Emacs:
> 1. lib-src/digest-doc.c
> 2. lib-src/emacs.csh: Emacs version is etc/emacs.csh
> 3. lib-src/hexl.c
> 4. lib-src/sorted-doc.c
> 5. lib-src/vcdiff
> 6. lwlib/lwlib.h
> 7. lwlib/lwlib-Xm.h
> 8. lwlib/xlwmenu.h
> 9. lwlib/xlwmenuP.h
> 10. man/texinfo.tex
> 11. man/texinfo.texi
> 12. man/widget.texi
> 13. src/s/aix4-2.h
> 14. src/s/freebsd.h
> 15. src/s/hpux11.h
> 16. src/s/irix6-0.h: Emacs version is irix6-5.sh
> 17. src/s/netbsd.h
> 18. src/s/openbsd.h
> 19. src/s/sol2.h: Emacs has sol2-3.h, sol2-4.h, sol2-5.h, sol2-6.h, and
>    sol2-10.h, some of which are explicitly GPL v3 or later, and some of which
>    have no explicit license statement.
> 20. src/s/usg5-4-2.h
>
> I'll try to drop in now and then and lend a hand where I can, but you
> should probably not depend on me for the near future.  I'm sorry about
> the unfortunate timing.
> --
> Jerry James
> http://www.jamezone.org/

Hi.  Some of the s/ files on your list don't actually have any issues
with them because they have a v2+ license already.  As for the
remainder, I went through the GNU versions, fixed them up to
correspond to changes and deletions we've made, and then sorted
through our versions to see if there was anything left that we had
that GNU didn't have.  Most of the remainder had to do with unexec
stuff, so I went ahead and deleted all unexec-related stuff from all
s/ and m/ files on the assumption that we'll move to pdump at the same
time as GPL 3.  This left only a small amount of stuff, which I went
through bit by bit to see whether (a) it was really necessary and (b)
I could identify the contributor.

For many files, there was nothing left; for a few others, there was
only one line or so.  The only real problem is sol2.h -- our version
is totally different from GNU, and there is a fair amount of stuff in
it that isn't in GNU.  Some of that I could trace to Martin, which
makes it OK, but there's a big chunk of prototypes that has no obvious
contributor and is apparently required for Solaris 6, but stopped
being necessary some time prior to Solaris 10.

I'll go ahead and post the questionable bits and we can decide what to
do about them -- e.g. are they necessary at all?  Can we redo them in
a different fashion so that we have a definite author?  Stephen, since
you are the one most likely to have a fit if I do something that you
don't consider kosher, what do you think about this plan?

Also, isn't there a rule at FSF that contributions less than 10 lines
don't require copyright assertion?

ben