[12285] in Perl-Users-Digest
Perl-Users Digest, Issue: 5886 Volume: 8
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Perl-Users Digest)
Fri Jun 4 11:12:27 1999
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 99 08:01:26 -0700
From: Perl-Users Digest <Perl-Users-Request@ruby.OCE.ORST.EDU>
To: Perl-Users@ruby.OCE.ORST.EDU (Perl-Users Digest)
Perl-Users Digest Fri, 4 Jun 1999 Volume: 8 Number: 5886
Today's topics:
Re: The artistic license and perl: (Chris Nandor)
Re: The artistic license and perl: (Marc Bissonnette)
Re: The artistic license and perl: <gbartels@xli.com>
Re: Trying to make custom start page for users via cook (Larry Rosler)
using sendmail with CGI.pm landre@my-deja.com
Win32::Process::GetExitCode - meaning <pkotala@logis.cz>
Writing GDBM arrays to file (Stephen Clark)
Re: Writing GDBM arrays to file (Benjamin Franz)
Special: Digest Administrivia (Last modified: 12 Dec 98 (Perl-Users-Digest Admin)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 04 Jun 1999 13:13:27 GMT
From: pudge@pobox.com (Chris Nandor)
Subject: Re: The artistic license and perl:
Message-Id: <pudge-0406990913310001@192.168.0.77>
In article <ylr9nsd5xa.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu>, Russ Allbery
<rra@stanford.edu> wrote:
# Tom Christiansen <tchrist@mox.perl.com> writes:
#
# > But it's important. There have been very large companies whose lawyers
# > have contacted Larry for clarification. They aren't allowed to touch
# > the GPV (why why WHY won't people understand this issue?), so have to
# > use the AL, but want clarification.
#
# That indicates a bug in the license. A license that routinely has people
# asking for clarification is just like a Perl script that produces warnings
# under -w. It may not be an *actual* problem, but it could be, and it
# should be cleaned up anyway on general principles.
You make it sound like people don't routinely ask for clarification on
pretty much every other license that deviates from the standard software
licenses proprietary software is licensed under. They do, they will, and
there is nothing any fantastic team of lawyers can do about it.
# Examples:
#
# | "Reasonable copying fee" is whatever you can justify on the basis
# | of media cost, duplication charges, time of people involved, and
# | so on. (You will not be required to justify it to the Copyright
# | Holder, but only to the computing community at large as a market
# | that must bear the fee.)
#
# In practice, this is going to mean "charge anything you want." There is
# no computing community as a legal entity, and therefore no one to object
# if you charge several hundred thousand dollars.
If you charge too much, no one will buy it. That's the point. I don't
see why this is a problem or a loophole. Sure, charge a million dollars,
be my guest. Who would it hurt, aside from the morons paying the money
for it?
# | 3. You may otherwise modify your copy of this Package in any way,
# | provided that you insert a prominent notice in each changed file stating
# | how and when you changed that file, and provided that you do at least
# | ONE of the following:
# |
# | a) place your modifications in the Public Domain or otherwise make
# | them Freely Available, such as by posting said modifications to
# | Usenet or an equivalent medium, or placing the modifications on a
# | major archive site such as uunet.uu.net, or by allowing the
# | Copyright Holder to include your modifications in the Standard
# | Version of the Package.
#
# In other words, you can modify the software package and distribute the
# modified version and make your modifications proprietary. In other words,
# this provision lets you create a proprietary fork of Perl.
I don't see that.
# How? Note the definition of Freely Available:
#
# | "Freely Available" means that no fee is charged for the item
# | itself, though there may be fees involved in handling the item.
# | It also means that recipients of the item may redistribute it
# | under the same conditions they received it.
#
# Nowhere here does it say anything about *use*. So you charge a licensing
# fee per use of the modified version of Perl and make people purchase a
# license to use it.
It doesn't explicitly say "use". It doesn't have to. No fee is charged
for the item itself. Part of "the item itself" necessarily includes the
use of it. At least, in English it does. I don't know about Lawyerspeak,
and I don't care. The lawyers can go jump in a big hole together and
never come out. The language is very clear here. It doesn't need to be
fixed. That said, I don't oppose a clarification to include "use". I
just can't see why it is necessary, or how any judge or jury could
possibly be convinced that "the item itself" does not include its use.
Even in a country where OJ was found to be innocent, I just don't see it.
# Note also that freely available just requires that the
# modifications be available "under the same conditions they received it"
# and there is no limit placed on the handling charges, so you can charge
# several thousand dollars for the patch *and require that anyone
# redistributing it do the same thing*.
Well, if you can justify in court that this fee of thousands of dollars
were related purely to the handling of the item, then fine. And if it
really does cost you that much to handle it, then you should be able to
charge that much.
# Here's another way of forking a proprietary version of Perl:
#
# | 5. You may charge a reasonable copying fee for any distribution of this
# | Package. You may charge any fee you choose for support of this Package.
# | You may not charge a fee for this Package itself. However, you may
# | distribute this Package in aggregate with other (possibly commercial)
# | programs as part of a larger (possibly commercial) software distribution
# | provided that you do not advertise this Package as a product of your
# | own. You may embed this Package's interpreter within an executable of
# | yours (by linking); this shall be construed as a mere form of
# | aggregation, provided that the complete Standard Version of the
# | interpreter is so embedded.
#
# So you write some trivial little wrapper around the Perl interpretor that
# changes a command-line option or something, and then distribute it as
# proprietary software.
Sure. Go for it. Why is this Bad? You can't call it perl, so I don't care.
# And finally this:
#
# | 8. Aggregation of this Package with a commercial distribution is always
# | permitted provided that the use of this Package is embedded; that is,
# | when no overt attempt is made to make this Package's interfaces visible
# | to the end user of the commercial distribution. Such use shall not be
# | construed as a distribution of this Package.
#
# I don't know *what* that means, and it would be horribly expensive to
# establish any particular meaning in court. A lawyer aiming at doing nasty
# things to Perl could do all sorts of things with this point just because
# it's not at all clear what it's even talking about.
It seems clear to me. *shrug* And again, I ask, do you have an example
of how this -- any of this -- could actually hurt perl or the Perl
community? I can't think of one. Forking of proprietary versions of perl
are an issue, but I don't see any loophole that allows people to fork it,
make it proprietary, AND call it by the name "perl". And that is all I
care about.
--
Chris Nandor mailto:pudge@pobox.com http://pudge.net/
%PGPKey = ('B76E72AD', [1024, '0824090B CE73CA10 1FF77F13 8180B6B6'])
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 04 Jun 1999 13:49:22 GMT
From: dragnet@internalysis.com (Marc Bissonnette)
Subject: Re: The artistic license and perl:
Message-Id: <CPQ53.1898$ga.825@news21.bellglobal.com>
The only problem I can see with all the mentioned 'loopholes' in the license
would be if some giant like Microsoft made a proprietary fork and called it
MSPerl and started marketing it as "the' perl package (ex the whole Java
experience).
Other than that, charge a billion dollars for it, if someone pays it, and
doesn't take the time to research the fact that you can download and install
the real Perl for free, it's their fault.
The problem, as I see it, is who would take on the giant in a case like that?
Larry? I dunno if he's made billions on his work so far, but from what I hear,
defending the Java issue was *really* expensive, and I'm not even sure that Sun
came out ahead in the end...
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 04 Jun 1999 09:36:57 -0400
From: Greg Bartels <gbartels@xli.com>
Subject: Re: The artistic license and perl:
Message-Id: <3757D679.801420EA@xli.com>
Russ Allbery wrote:
>
> Tom Christiansen <tchrist@mox.perl.com> writes:
>
> > But it's important. There have been very large companies whose lawyers
> > have contacted Larry for clarification. They aren't allowed to touch
> > the GPV (why why WHY won't people understand this issue?), so have to
> > use the AL, but want clarification.
>
> That indicates a bug in the license. A license that routinely has people
> asking for clarification is just like a Perl script that produces warnings
> under -w. It may not be an *actual* problem, but it could be, and it
> should be cleaned up anyway on general principles.
>
> Examples:
>
> | "Reasonable copying fee" is whatever you can justify on the basis
> | of media cost, duplication charges, time of people involved, and
> | so on. (You will not be required to justify it to the Copyright
> | Holder, but only to the computing community at large as a market
> | that must bear the fee.)
>
> In practice, this is going to mean "charge anything you want." There is
> no computing community as a legal entity, and therefore no one to object
> if you charge several hundred thousand dollars.
>
> | 3. You may otherwise modify your copy of this Package in any way,
> | provided that you insert a prominent notice in each changed file stating
> | how and when you changed that file, and provided that you do at least
> | ONE of the following:
> |
> | a) place your modifications in the Public Domain or otherwise make
> | them Freely Available, such as by posting said modifications to
> | Usenet or an equivalent medium, or placing the modifications on a
> | major archive site such as uunet.uu.net, or by allowing the
> | Copyright Holder to include your modifications in the Standard
> | Version of the Package.
>
> In other words, you can modify the software package and distribute the
> modified version and make your modifications proprietary. In other words,
> this provision lets you create a proprietary fork of Perl.
>
> How? Note the definition of Freely Available:
>
> | "Freely Available" means that no fee is charged for the item
> | itself, though there may be fees involved in handling the item.
> | It also means that recipients of the item may redistribute it
> | under the same conditions they received it.
> And finally this:
>
> | 8. Aggregation of this Package with a commercial distribution is always
> | permitted provided that the use of this Package is embedded; that is,
> | when no overt attempt is made to make this Package's interfaces visible
> | to the end user of the commercial distribution. Such use shall not be
> | construed as a distribution of this Package.
>
> I don't know *what* that means, and it would be horribly expensive to
> establish any particular meaning in court. A lawyer aiming at doing nasty
> things to Perl could do all sorts of things with this point just because
> it's not at all clear what it's even talking about.
my understanding of aggregation means to include perl on a CDROM with
your own, separate programs, and then youre able to license the bundle
as
your own. so, slap on your own 5 line "hello world" program and bundle
it with perl, and you've got aggregation.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 06:30:50 -0700
From: lr@hpl.hp.com (Larry Rosler)
Subject: Re: Trying to make custom start page for users via cookie and perl. Help please?
Message-Id: <MPG.11c174ca579ab84d989b69@nntp.hpl.hp.com>
In article <375789bb@newsread3.dircon.co.uk> on 4 Jun 1999 09:09:31
+0100, Jonathan Stowe <gellyfish@gellyfish.com> says...
> David Cassell <cassell@mail.cor.epa.gov> wrote:
> >
> > The person using the name 'Randal Schwartz'
> > is actually a little old lady in Kansas who knits afghans.
>
> Hmm knit one, perl one, knit one,perl one - Anyhow thats cruelty to those
> poor dogs.
I thought it was the Taliban that she was being cruel to.
And the way things go in this newsgroup it's more likely to be
Nit two, Perl one, nit two, Perl one, ...
Sigh...
--
(Just Another Larry) Rosler
Hewlett-Packard Company
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Larry_Rosler/
lr@hpl.hp.com
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 04 Jun 1999 12:57:00 GMT
From: landre@my-deja.com
Subject: using sendmail with CGI.pm
Message-Id: <7j8iem$c3c$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Here is a script that works on its own:
open(MAIL,"|$mailprog -t");
print MAIL "To: $email\n";
print MAIL "From: landre\@geerwade.com\n";
print MAIL "Subject: Your order confirmation\n";
print MAIL "X-Priority: 1 (Highest)\n\n";
print MAIL "blah, blah, blah:\n";
print MAIL "\n";
close(MAIL);
All the variables are defined, and the email gets
through allright!
Now I would like to use this same exact snippet
within a much bigger script that uses CGI.pm and
subs. So I make a sum out of this snippet, I
call the sub from the top of the script, along
with the other subs, but it does NOT work...
Nothing happens AT ALL...
Here is what I do:
if ( $action eq "process" ) {
&validData();
&writeLog();
&confemail();
print "Location: https://some.dir.com/etc...";
} else {
&shipPage();
}
##################################################
##############
# Subroutines
#
sub confemail {
# Next mail an order confirmation to the client:
and you know the rest. Any idea?
Thanks
Lionel
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 15:26:17 +0200
From: "Pavel Kotala" <pkotala@logis.cz>
Subject: Win32::Process::GetExitCode - meaning
Message-Id: <928502946.497218@gate.logis.cz>
When I use Win32::Process::GetExitCode and Process is running, I receive
value
259
When process is not running, I receive
3221225786
What are meaning of these values? What other values can I get?
Thank You
Pavel Kotala
------------------------------
Date: 4 Jun 1999 13:24:16 GMT
From: stephecl@cogs.susx.ac.uk (Stephen Clark)
Subject: Writing GDBM arrays to file
Message-Id: <7j8k20$eho$1@infa.central.susx.ac.uk>
Keywords: GDBM
I am dealing with large associative arrays and I am finding that writing them
to file as GDBM files
is taking a prohibitive amount of time. For example, if
I run the code shown below, it takes around 45 minutes to write 25M, and I am
dealing with bigger arrays than this.
Is there a way of speeding up the write process?
Many thanks,
Steve Clark
COGS, University of Sussex
#!/local/perl5/bin/perl
use GDBM_File;
tie (%gdbm, 'GDBM_File', "$file", GDBM_WRCREAT | GDBM_FAST, 0640);
while ($i < 400000) {
$key = 'key' . $i;
$gdbm{$key} = 'value';
$i++;
}
untie %gdbm;
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 04 Jun 1999 14:17:59 GMT
From: snowhare@long-lake.nihongo.org (Benjamin Franz)
Subject: Re: Writing GDBM arrays to file
Message-Id: <reR53.1349$F7.103965@typhoon-sf.snfc21.pbi.net>
Keywords: GDBM
In article <7j8k20$eho$1@infa.central.susx.ac.uk>,
Stephen Clark <stephecl@cogs.susx.ac.uk> wrote:
>I am dealing with large associative arrays and I am finding that writing them
>to file as GDBM files is taking a prohibitive amount of time. For example, if
>I run the code shown below, it takes around 45 minutes to write 25M, and I am
>dealing with bigger arrays than this.
>Is there a way of speeding up the write process?
[snip]
Look into 'man gdbm'. 'GDBM_CACHESIZE' _might_ (no promises) help. Otherwise,
the answer is 'use faster hard drives and/or a faster computer OS'. If you
are using some Sun OS, its filesystem is notoriously slow. I've gotten
order of magnitude speed differences doing the exact same disk tasks between
Linux and Solaris on similar hardware.
--
Benjamin Franz
------------------------------
Date: 12 Dec 98 21:33:47 GMT (Last modified)
From: Perl-Request@ruby.oce.orst.edu (Perl-Users-Digest Admin)
Subject: Special: Digest Administrivia (Last modified: 12 Dec 98)
Message-Id: <null>
Administrivia:
Well, after 6 months, here's the answer to the quiz: what do we do about
comp.lang.perl.moderated. Answer: nothing.
]From: Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>
]Date: 21 Sep 1998 19:53:43 -0700
]Subject: comp.lang.perl.moderated available via e-mail
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------------------------------
End of Perl-Users Digest V8 Issue 5886
**************************************
