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Subject: 
Re: Parts license
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.cad.dev
Date: 
Tue, 26 Sep 2000 20:07:19 GMT
Viewed: 
1688 times
  
In lugnet.cad.dev, Leonardo Zide wrote:

Steve Bliss wrote:
What does 'conversion to another format' mean?  Do you mean converting the
ARJ archive to ZIP format?  How about converting the ASCII data to EBCDIC?
Or doing a straight conversion to a binary format?[1]  How about
reorganizing the directory structure?  How about unarchiving the
distribution file, and posting all the files individually on a webserver?

I think all of those examples are simply conversions to other formats,
they don't change the contents of the files. This could be added to the
'Definitions' section of the license.

My thoughts:

ARJ to ZIP?       Simple Conversion
ASCII to EBCDIC?  Simple Conversion
text to binary?   Essential change
reorganizing the directory structure?  Major change
posting all the files individually on a webserver? Major change

From the zlib license:

1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not
  claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software
  in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be
  appreciated but is not required.

We could change the last sentence from "not required" to "required"
and add the part about having a link to www.ldraw.org.

Hmmm.  Interesting.

Actually the zlib license is very simple, it only has 2 more
paragraphs:

2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must
not be
    misrepresented as being the original software.
3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source
distribution.

I'm not sure about "list their changes".  How about requiring that they
flag each file they change, by adding a comment to the file header?

Maybe requiring a 'changelog' to be included would be better ?

Or both.

Also, they may *not* mark new files with the tags "Original LDraw
[Part|Primitive|Subpart]" or "Official LCAD [Part|Primitive|Subpart]".

How about: "Any parts that have their contents changed must have the
line "Original/Official ..." removed" ?

Nah, it should be left in, with an additional line added.  That way, the
file is clearly marked as "LCAD, but modified".

Sounds reasonable. All we need to do is change "New files added to the
library can have any license." to "New parts can only be distributed
with the library if they are published under this license, otherwise
they must be distributed separately.". Now we'll need to define
'separately' :)

I'd say separately means installed to a different directory.  If possible,
archived to a different distribution file.

1) BTW, truly 'dumb' conversions to binary (where every parameter is
written as a 4-byte floating point) don't seem to save any space.

I think only in a few cases it does: A float is 4 bytes, so if you
have 3 ASCII digits plus a space then both formats have the same size
but if you get a number with decimal places then the binary format will
usually be smaller.

Yah.  From empirical evidence, I'd say there is little, if any, gain.

Steve



Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Parts license
 
(...) I think all of those examples are simply conversions to other formats, they don't change the contents of the files. This could be added to the 'Definitions' section of the license. (...) From the zlib license: 1. The origin of this software (...) (24 years ago, 25-Sep-00, to lugnet.cad.dev)

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