Annotation of src/usr.bin/indent/README, Revision 1.1
1.1 ! deraadt 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:
![[BACK]](/icons/back.gif){kind=icon}
Return to README CVS log ![[TXT]](/icons/text.gif){kind=icon}
![[DIR]](/icons/dir.gif){kind=icon}
Up to [local] / src / usr.bin / indent