Re: Adding BBDB 3 core to Emacs

[Roland Winkler]

On Mon Nov 23 2015 Richard Stallman wrote:
>   > The file bbdb-snarf.el says GPL 1.
> 
> Can you arrange to completely discard that?

The new BBDB also has a file bbdb-snarf.el which is a complete
rewrite of the old file, where only the general concept of "snarfing
records into BBDB" survived.

This snarfing can be a neat thing, but it is certainly an add-on to
the BBDB core.  So to avoid whatever problems, it can remain with
other add-ons at savannah.nongnu.org without affecting BBDB core
functionality.

Actually, the file says:

;;; Copyright (C) 1997 by John Heidemann .
;;; $Id: bbdb-snarf.el,v 1.44 2006/05/26 21:20:07 fenk Exp $
;;;
;;; This file is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
;;; it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published
;;; by the Free Software Foundation version 1.

John Heidemann has an FSF copyright assignment on file and I can
check with him about bbdb-snarf.el.  The above email address appears
to be up-to-date.  What kind of document would the FSF need from
him for this file?

The subsequent maintainer of the old bbdb-snarf.el, Robert
Widhopf-Fenk, assigned "past and future changes" to the FSF.  Is
this sufficient?  I could also try to contact him, though I have
found him difficult to reach.

Would this be sufficient for "Copyright by the FSF"?

Thanks,

Roland

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Re: Adding BBDB 3 core to Emacs

[Roland Winkler]

On Sun Nov 22 2015 Richard Stallman wrote:
> The previous version of BBDB was released under GPL 2-or-later, right?

According to http://bbdb.sourceforge.net, the last version of the
"old" BBDB was 2.35 released on January 30, 2007.

Most lisp files in this tar ball specify GPL 2-or-later.

The files bbdb-ftp.el, bbdb-gnus.el, bbdb-mhe.el, bbdb-print.el,
bbdb-rmail.el, bbdb-sc.el, bbdb-vm.el were released under GPL
1-or-later.

The file bbdb-snarf.el says GPL 1.

The file bbdb-merge.el says very briefly "GPL" without any reference
to a particular version.

Roland

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Re: Adding BBDB 3 core to Emacs

[Roland Winkler]

On Sun Nov 22 2015 Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
>  > BBDB v3 on savannah.nongnu.org is essentially a complete rewrite,
> 
> "Essentially" as understood by programmers is rarely anything
> close to what a lawyer thinks of as an independent work not
> considered a derivative.  I doubt *any* of the newly assigned work
> was done without looking at the original, and very likely most
> still uses original internal variable names, structures,
> algorithms, etc.  You'd better check with the lawyers.

Have you looked at the new code?

Roland

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Re: Adding BBDB 3 core to Emacs

[Roland Winkler]

On Mon Nov 23 2015 Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
>  > Have you looked at the new code?
> 
> I don't need to; I trust you that 'most every line has been changed,
> and many functions completely rewritten.  The point is that old
> configuration works with very little change with the new code.
> Therefore it stinks of "derivative work" to me.

Your view would never allow a program like libreoffice to come into
existence.

(Users who switched from old to new BBDB suffered a lot in the sense
that none of their old configurations worked anymore.  But our
current discussion was a major reason not to worry about the old
code base.)

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Re: Adding BBDB 3 core to Emacs

[Stephen Leake]

Thomas Fitzsimmons  writes:

> "Roland Winkler"  writes:
>
>> One option could be to incorporate the core of BBDB into GNU Emacs
>> and keep the loose ends in savannah.nongnu.org.  BBDB has a long
>> history of having a core plus many add-ons.
>
> I really like this idea.  Then we could count on BBDB 3 (core) being in
> Emacs core.  

Gnu ELPA would be more appropriate than Emacs core.
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Re: Adding BBDB 3 core to Emacs

[Roland Winkler]

On Sat Nov 21 2015 John Wiegley wrote:
> I would much prefer this to be in "tarball ELPA", so that it is
> included in the distribution, but not a focus for the other
> developers. Would there be any need to include it within core
> itself?
 
The question is to what extent one wants to consider BBDB a core
functionality that other packages rely upon.  I myself see the pros
and cons of both sides and therefore do not have strong feelings in
either direction.  Yet I certainly hope that in either case such a
decision will not be carved in stone so that if necessary it can be
reviewed once more in later times.

Roland

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Re: Adding BBDB 3 core to Emacs

[Roland Winkler]

On Sat Nov 21 2015 Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> Didn't BBDB have some copyright issues that precluded its
> distribution with Emacs or under the same license?  (Apologies if
> I'm misremembering.)

No, you are perfectly right.  BBDB v2 *did* have copyright issues.
BBDB v3 on savannah.nongnu.org is essentially a complete rewrite,
where all authors who contributed new code to BBDB v3 assigned their
copyright to the FSF.  This covers the core of BBDB v3.  A few loose
ends include add-ons to the core of BBDB which survived the upgrade
to v3.  Now the question is how to deal with the current situation.
The proposal is to integrate the core of BBDB v3 more tightly with
GNU Emacs, yet there is more than one option for this: either the
core of BBDB becomes part of GNU Emacs itself or it goes into GNU
Elpa.  (In either case the "loose ends" can stay in
savannah.nongnu.org till hopefully one day their cases are resolved,
too.  But that's obviously less urgent.)

Roland

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