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Annotation of 43BSDTahoe/ucb/indent/README, revision 1.1

1.1     ! root        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 [email protected] Wed Mar  9 15:30:55 1988
        !            12: > Date: Tue, 8 Mar 88 18:36:25 EST
        !            13: > From: [email protected] (Ozan Yigit)
        !            14: > To: [email protected]
        !            15: > Cc: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
        !            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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