* Marco Antoniotti <marc...@parades.rm.cnr.it> | The question I had in mind was: can Harlequin implement the API described | in a Franz Copyrighted document?
this "question" is an insult to people who provide information to the community. just because they see no reason to give away everything and every right to their work does not mean that they are bastards out to control people's reasonable courses of action. copyright is a fairly well-defined legal concept -- it does not preclude understanding and using the information and ideas whose expression is protected from reproduction, and never has precluded such use. in particular, copyright does not affect the implementability of a specification.
| This is what I read here. Apologies if my question was too concise.
I really think you need to study some copyright law. unfounded fears such as the ones you have expressed can lead to no good, especially if they go unchecked and you actually believe that affixing a copyright notice to a specification has any bearing on its implementability.
sometimes, I wonder if the reason people favor free software is that they have zero clue about the freedoms and rights they actually _have_ within the boundaries of intellectual property law, and maybe the bone-headed intellectual-property lawyers of, say, DVD-CCA, tend to reinforce their fears, too, but hysterics like fearing that a copyright notice would not allow others to implement the functions described in a document, _could_ explain why people who want source code to everything consistently fail to grasp the meaning of "license", in particular, that the GPL is in fact a _license_ that grants them a bunch of rights they otherwise do not have, and that if they are not granted all these rights by the only legal entity that can grant them, they are in fact violating intellectual property laws, whether they get prosecuted for it or not, or, indeed, whether they are cast as world-class heroes for it or not. arguing such topics requires people to know the rights they have _under_ the law -- intellectual property is one of those areas where the law grants rights that cannot be abridged by contract or agreement. few "freedom fighters" realize that they are often storming open doors and fighting for what they already have. some "freedom fighters" implicitly accuse others of denying them rights they cannot be denied, except to the degree that they willfully reject the option of exercising them, for which hardly anyone else can be held responsible.
a population which has natural rights and has also been granted rights under the law, but which is so ignorant of their rights that they believe anyone can take them away from them at will, will live in such fear of the law itself that both rights and law lose their meaning. this is what is happening to the ignorant hacker community, quite unlike what _could_ happen to the knowledgeable hackers of only a few years past. "ignorance of the law is no excuse" cuts both ways. incompetence in the search for freedom will only cause them to find the freedom to be incompetent.
> > > As for X3J13, the proposal may come to be appropriate for submission > > > eventually, but we're certainly not there yet and are taking this > > > one step at a time.
> > That is all I wanted to know and I say it is fair enough.
> > As usual the problem is "what happens if Harlequin decides that Franz > > proposal is not-what-they-wanted and vice-versa". Then we may end up > > with two different implementations for I/O stuff and the whole Common Lisp > > community suffers.
> I disagree that the community would suffer. Initiating dialog always > carries with it the risk of disagreement, even to the point of impasse > in the extreme case. But without dialog, change cannot occur.
I understand this, and agree.
> We have made good use of the Gray streams proposal for the last 10 > years. Others have started using it more recently, and it has served > us all well. But there are several problems with the proposal, and > we have a good idea as to how to do I/O better in several ways. This > new proposal that we will make available encapsulates those ideas.
This is a good thing.
> If the ideas that this proposal espouses are completely wrong, then > it will become clear in the process of being made public. But if > these ideas catch on, then they will be implemented, whether portably > or not, and the whole Lisp community will win, not suffer.
I also agree on this. I am just wary of the "potably or not" in your sentence.
> One other aspect of this: Franz has the choice of how to disseminate > this proposal. We could just play the cards close and show it first > at our next release. Or, we could show it sooner and allow both the > community and ourselves to benefit from the ensuing dialog. We have > chosen the latter approach.
And you should be commended for that. You made a good choice.
Just to clarify. I have been pleased by the main vendors (Franz and Harlequin) in the past. There are still issue I disagree with, but all in all I am grateful for what the vendors have been doing.
If once in a while I sound too critical, it's because I stepped out of bed with the wrong foot that day :)
Cheers
-- Marco Antoniotti =========================================== PARADES, Via San Pantaleo 66, I-00186 Rome, ITALY tel. +39 - 06 68 10 03 17, fax. +39 - 06 68 80 79 26 http://www.parades.rm.cnr.it/~marcoxa
Andrew Cooke wrote: > In article <38903844.E92B3...@iname.com>, > "Fernando D. Mato Mira" <matom...@iname.com> wrote: > > Andrew Cooke wrote:
> > > Ouch! Next week I'm planning to write code that generates binary > files > > > to a certain standard (Midi music data). I haven't checked the docs
> unfortunately, that (and a few variants I tried) doesn't work > (truncated versions look like they do exist, but I don't have permission > to read them). could you repost?
Weird. You shouldn't have prolems with either the complete URL or the top-level page
Erik Naggum wrote: > reproduction, and never has precluded such use. in particular, copyright > does not affect the implementability of a specification.
Itchy question: What happens when the specification is (partly) expressed in a copyrighted C header file? Even if you type yourself every byte, it'll be essentially the same thing.
Craig Brozefsky wrote: > Yah, they can implement it. In the other direction, I am implementing > something described in Harlequin copyrighted documentation for > CMUCL(should be largely portable tho), the CommonSQL package.
How does it relate to Paul Meurer's SQL-ODBC package?
Robert Monfera <monf...@fisec.com> writes: > Craig Brozefsky wrote:
> > Yah, they can implement it. In the other direction, I am implementing > > something described in Harlequin copyrighted documentation for > > CMUCL(should be largely portable tho), the CommonSQL package.
> How does it relate to Paul Meurer's SQL-ODBC package?
It doesn't actually. It is built on top of Pierre Mai's MaiSQL, which provides the database interfaces. I implemented a [...] sql syntax like CommonSQL. The SQL-ODBC [...] syntax is actually different than the CommonSQL one. SQL-ODBC also did not have an OO interfce when I last looked at it. I am implemented that presently, and have everything except for :join slots done. I am making some improvements on CommonSQL as well, which are all compatible with the published interface.
-- Craig Brozefsky <cr...@red-bean.com> Free Scheme/Lisp Software http://www.red-bean.com/~craig "Hiding like thieves in the night from life, illusions of oasis making you look twice. -- Mos Def and Talib Kweli
* "Fernando D. Mato Mira" <matom...@iname.com> | Itchy question: What happens when the specification is (partly) expressed | in a copyrighted C header file? Even if you type yourself every byte, | it'll be essentially the same thing.
invoke "fair use" and claim that you cannot copyright numerical constants.
copyright does not cover reproducing functional equivalence, so you could argue that you're not reproducing more than you have to in order to use the specification for its intended purpose (which by law is prevented from being "to screw the readers" :).
Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.no> writes: > * Marco Antoniotti <marc...@parades.rm.cnr.it> > | The question I had in mind was: can Harlequin implement the API described > | in a Franz Copyrighted document?
> this "question" is an insult to people who provide information to the > community.
My original question and also what I said afterward were not meant to be an insult to anybody. If they have been read in this way I apologize.
However, the result of my question was to read many postings that clarified many things about Franz standing, and about their upcoming proposal for I/O and other things. I believe this is a good thing.
> just because they see no reason to give away everything and > every right to their work does not mean that they are bastards out to > control people's reasonable courses of action.
I never implied this. And, as I said, there are issues I disagree with with the vendors' policies. If this is offensive, there is nothing I can do about it. In this specific case, Duane Rettig's response was definitively not something I could disagree with.
> copyright is a fairly > well-defined legal concept -- it does not preclude understanding and > using the information and ideas whose expression is protected from > reproduction, and never has precluded such use. in particular, copyright > does not affect the implementability of a specification.
Fine. But in this specific case my problem is also that Harlequin (or another vendor, or the CMUCL and CLisp crowd) will not be "bound" (for an imprecise definition and use of the term) to implement anything. Should the (amended through public discussion) proposal be accepted by X3J13, Harlequin and the others, would have more or less of a "duty" (I am once again imprecise) to implement the proposal.
Now the question for you is: is this a "legitimate" issue to raise?
> | This is what I read here. Apologies if my question was too concise.
> I really think you need to study some copyright law.
Yes and no. I can just ask you :)
I cut the rest. It was interesting to read and I learned something. Anyway, let me assure you that I know I may be naive in many ways, but in this case I definitively do not feel like I did anything particularly wrong.
Cheers
-- Marco Antoniotti =========================================== PARADES, Via San Pantaleo 66, I-00186 Rome, ITALY tel. +39 - 06 68 10 03 17, fax. +39 - 06 68 80 79 26 http://www.parades.rm.cnr.it/~marcoxa
* Marco Antoniotti wrote: > Fine. But in this specific case my problem is also that Harlequin (or > another vendor, or the CMUCL and CLisp crowd) will not be "bound" (for > an imprecise definition and use of the term) to implement anything. > Should the (amended through public discussion) proposal be accepted by > X3J13, Harlequin and the others, would have more or less of a "duty" > (I am once again imprecise) to implement the proposal.
But the point is that until there exist a number of implementations of some better proposal, or proposal*s*, J13 would be seriously ill-advised to try and sit down and try and impose some standard on everyone, because it might just not be implementable by anyone. I am not confident of the ability of J13 (or *any* organisation) to sit down and arrive at some reasonable standard in an area where there is no experience of implementation. The result of that would be a disaster in my opinion (and I'm pretty sure that this is the opinion of most J13 members too, thank goodness!).
So I am really in favour of vendors experimenting with extensions.
Tim Bradshaw <t...@cley.com> writes: > * Marco Antoniotti wrote:
> > Fine. But in this specific case my problem is also that Harlequin (or > > another vendor, or the CMUCL and CLisp crowd) will not be "bound" (for > > an imprecise definition and use of the term) to implement anything. > > Should the (amended through public discussion) proposal be accepted by > > X3J13, Harlequin and the others, would have more or less of a "duty" > > (I am once again imprecise) to implement the proposal.
> But the point is that until there exist a number of implementations of > some better proposal, or proposal*s*, J13 would be seriously > ill-advised to try and sit down and try and impose some standard on > everyone, because it might just not be implementable by anyone. I am > not confident of the ability of J13 (or *any* organisation) to sit > down and arrive at some reasonable standard in an area where there is > no experience of implementation. The result of that would be a > disaster in my opinion (and I'm pretty sure that this is the opinion > of most J13 members too, thank goodness!).
> So I am really in favour of vendors experimenting with extensions.
I agree with this as well.
I guess I will not intervene anymore on these subjects. It would take a very long post with a lot of premises, just to ask a question. :)
Cheers
-- Marco Antoniotti =========================================== PARADES, Via San Pantaleo 66, I-00186 Rome, ITALY tel. +39 - 06 68 10 03 17, fax. +39 - 06 68 80 79 26 http://www.parades.rm.cnr.it/~marcoxa
> If the ideas that this proposal espouses are completely wrong, then > it will become clear in the process of being made public. But if > these ideas catch on, then they will be implemented, whether portably > or not, and the whole Lisp community will win, not suffer.
Bravo! Well said.
> One other aspect of this: Franz has the choice of how to disseminate > this proposal. We could just play the cards close and show it first > at our next release. Or, we could show it sooner and allow both the > community and ourselves to benefit from the ensuing dialog. We have > chosen the latter approach.
And as a paying customer of Franz, I'm very pleased with this approach. The last thing the CL community needs is yet another tired replay of the kind of paranoid vendor-bashing that killed News and stuck us with X-Windows, etc.
* Marco Antoniotti <marc...@parades.rm.cnr.it> | Now the question for you is: is this a "legitimate" issue to raise?
implementing a standard is always voluntary. this may annoy some people (it annoys me _greatly_ at times, like when the stupid Norwegian Language Council incredulously insists on writing "13.2.00" for today, for the single, simple, stupid reason that the Swedes write "2000-02-13", and we can't do anything the Swedes do unless it's really stupid and then not until they figured out that it was stupid and did something else that we obviously can't do at that point, but I digress irresponsibly). even when some proposal is put into a standard, the user community has to be responsible and take issue with half-witted or bogus implementations.
| > I really think you need to study some copyright law. | | Yes and no. I can just ask you :)
yikes! like most other people who give legal advice on the Net, what I have said on legal matters have turned out to be wrong at some later date, so this is an almost _frightening_ level of "trust". like the other day, British authorities came up with this bill that would make it illegal _not_ to decode files or messages stored on your computer, as if the bloody obvious assault on every citizen's assumption of innocence until proven guilty would _not_ be to store files or messages on their computer to which they did not in fact _have_ a decoding key. the police often plant evidence in drug cases to incarcerate people they just don't like, and now they can do the same with computer people they just don't like. however, a few weeks ago, I would have said this was impossible to implement under the European Human Rights Convention, but what do you know? I was wrong: in the interest of removing personal freedom and security from people's lives when they do something politicians are afraid of out of sheer, mind-numbing ignorance, _anything_ goes, and _anywhere_ in the world, even England, with their Magna Carta heritage.
Please respond to b...@franz.com, with the subject line: Comments on streams design
We at Franz, Inc. are pleased to make our new simple-streams design available to the public for review and comment. Whether you are a customer or a competitor, we are interested in what you think of this document, good or bad. Comments may be made toward any aspect of the design that you wish, including its applicability to general CL implementation. With that in mind, please note that the document itself has a large amount of Allegro CL specific wording, and is thus probably not appropriate for non-Franz Common Lisps. However, the intention of the document is to promulgate implementation-independent concepts, and the basic design should be portable.
The design is known to work in the Allegro CL implementation, in a version that will become 6.0 but which is not quite ready for beta testing.
We may answer mail that comes in, depending on its nature, but please don't count on us answering all such mail. In particular, we will _not_ answer the following questions beyond the comments given here:
Questions we will not comment on:
- When will 6.0 be released? The general answer is "Sometime this year." However, the technical staff will not give a more specific answer than that.
- How fast is it? Other than preliminary timings and optimizations, which indicate that the design meets our own performance goals, we have not done thorough optimization on the implementation, and thus do not yet have any numbers to offer you. We may have such numbers in the future.
Enjoy.
Duane Rettig Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com/ (www) 1995 University Ave Suite 275 Berkeley, CA 94704 Phone: (510) 548-3600; FAX: (510) 548-8253 du...@Franz.COM (internet)
