Annotation of src/usr.bin/indent/README, Revision 1.1.1.1
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:
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