Mailing List Archive

Martin v. Loewis writes:
> Now that the file copyrights are changed, I expect this message to
> change as well. May I suggest that, instead of adding another line,
> the two last lines of this message are removed?

You may! I rather like this idea myself.


-Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake at beopen.com>
BeOpen PythonLabs Team Member

Guido van Rossum <guido@beopen.com>:
> On the other hand, why does it bother you? (*NOT* a rhetorical question.)

Maybe he doesn't like noisy programs. I don't either. Programs
should either (a) tell me what I need to hear, (b) tell me what I've
asked to hear, or (c) keep their traps shut and refrain from wasting my
time and attention.

(There are some who would say this atttude makes me old-fashioned in an
age of GUIs. Au contraire -- visual gewgaws and noise are so seductive
to interface designers that we need to be *less* tolerant of noise than
formerly.)
--
<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr">Eric S. Raymond</a>

The men and women who founded our country knew, by experience, that there
are times when the free person's answer to oppressive government has to be
delivered with a bullet. Thus, the right to bear arms is not just *a*
freedom; it's the mother of all freedoms. Don't let them disarm you!

On Mon, Jul 03, 2000 at 09:48:17PM -0400, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> Guido van Rossum <guido@beopen.com>:
> > On the other hand, why does it bother you? (*NOT* a rhetorical question.)
>
> Maybe he doesn't like noisy programs. I don't either. Programs
> should either (a) tell me what I need to hear, (b) tell me what I've
> asked to hear, or (c) keep their traps shut and refrain from wasting my
> time and attention.

Agreed. I've prefer not to have several lines of spammage hit my screen
whenever I invoked Python. What's the point? And note there isn't a license
requirement to print that stuff.

Cheers,
-g

--
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/

> On startup, the current CVS python reports (on my system)
>
> Python 2.0b1 (#31, Jul 1 2000, 23:13:39) [GCC 2.95.2 19991024 (release)] on linux2
> Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
> Copyright 1995-2000 Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI)
>
> Now that the file copyrights are changed, I expect this message to
> change as well. May I suggest that, instead of adding another line,
> the two last lines of this message are removed?
>
> People who need to find out who holds the copyright to this software
> still can print sys.copyright.

I think I recall this was a convention that the GNU folks claim is
required from a legal standpoint. E.g. when I start gdb, I get:

GNU gdb 4.18
Copyright 1998 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are
welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions.
Type "show copying" to see the conditions.
There is absolutely no warranty for GDB. Type "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "i386-redhat-linux".
(gdb)

The Python welcome message is a lot less verbose!

But I am not a lawyer (IANAL) and maybe the GNU folks are
superstitious about this.

On the other hand, why does it bother you? (*NOT* a rhetorical question.)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://dinsdale.python.org/~guido/)

> Programs
> should either (a) tell me what I need to hear, (b) tell me what I've
> asked to hear, or (c) keep their traps shut and refrain from wasting my
> time and attention.

You have almost described my perfect partner :-)

[.Not really, of course, but the sexist comparison was just _screaming_ to
be made :-]

Mark.

On Tue, Jul 04, 2000 at 12:31:11PM +1000, Mark Hammond wrote:
>
> > Programs
> > should either (a) tell me what I need to hear, (b) tell me what I've
> > asked to hear, or (c) keep their traps shut and refrain from wasting my
> > time and attention.
>
> You have almost described my perfect partner :-)

*rofl*

> [.Not really, of course, but the sexist comparison was just _screaming_ to
> be made :-]

Sexist? Not at all. You didn't say whether your perfect partner was a man or
a woman.

;-)

Cheers,
-g

--
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/

> I think I recall this was a convention that the GNU folks claim is
> required from a legal standpoint.

The GPL requires such a message, specifically 2c)

c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively
when run, you must cause it, when started running for such
interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an
announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a
notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide
a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under
these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this
License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but
does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on
the Program is not required to print an announcement.)

So if you modify gdb, you'll have to update the copyright notice it
prints. Please note the exception: some programs (e.g. bash) don't
"normally" print a message, so you don't have to add one.

In any case, I believe this is just a GPL requirement - for Python,
you could have it behave in any way you please.

> On the other hand, why does it bother you?

I don't bother too much, and I hadn't said anything if I didn't expect
the message to change anyway.

The interactive prompt of Python 2 will be shown on page 1 of the next
print of my Python book, and I did not mean to go into Python's
history until page 14 :-)

Regards,
Martin