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Ah, that explains why TXR isn't more commonly distributed and used - it uses a custom license (which is probably a full-on contract now) and nobody understands

Ah, that explains why TXR isn't more commonly distributed and used - it uses a custom license (which is probably a full-on contract now) and nobody understands it without having to ask a lawyer now.

kazinator 10y ago
Whereas everyone understands the Windows 7 license, which is why that is so widely used. You've hit the nail right on the head there. Anyway, I only made these changes July 2014. I saw only a slight concern from the Fedora people, then haven't heard anything about it. (Actually they were more concerned with the sub-licensed MPI library whose README says that it is in the public domain, yet there are some stray copyright notices with "all rights reserved" text in the files.)
- vertex-four 10y ago
  You're not writing Windows 7, is the thing, and there's other common tools in the area of text parsing/mangling which have much more standard licenses.
  - kazinator 10y ago
    To frame things more constructively, what imagined situation are you most concerned about? "Here I am, using this program five years from now when, due to the licensing, <bad thing> happens." What is <bad thing>? For example, is it something you would suddenly like to do with the program, but are not permitted (yet would be if it used the original BSD license verbatim?)
    - kazinator 10y ago
      The <bad thing> is this: "I've been using this nice program for a while now and started redistributing it, and now my organization/customers/whoever are giving me grief due to its weirdly modified BSD-ish license." Grief is grief, even if those people are inflicting it for an unsubstantiated reason (fear of the unknown).
      - vertex-four 10y ago
        Indeed. I'm an occasional packager for a small Linux distro, and there's a reasonable chance this counts as a non-free license with your modifications... which in this distro means we couldn't distribute binary packages and installing it from source would have to have a user manually enable non-free packages.
        vertex-four 10y ago
        (When I say "might", I mean "I have no idea, and I'm not a lawyer, and I can't afford one to look at your custom license".)
kazinator 10y ago
TXR 151 is released now, and uses a stock 2-Clause BSD license again. I made other changes, such as that for instance the license boxes in the Windows installer only have an "Acknowledge" button rather than "Agree". No mention is made anywhere that anyone has to agree to anything to use the software. A misleading diagnostic was also fixed in the program: if "txr --license" cannot find the LICENSE file it no longer falsely insinuates that the installation might be "unlicensed" (since there is no such licensing requirement that any copyright or license notice be present in executable images).

Ah, that explains why TXR isn't more commonly distributed and used - it uses a custom license (which is probably a full-on contract now) and nobody understands it without having to ask a lawyer now.

kazinator 10y ago

Whereas everyone understands the Windows 7 license, which is why that is so widely used. You've hit the nail right on the head there. Anyway, I only made these changes July 2014. I saw only a slight concern from the Fedora people, then haven't heard anything about it. (Actually they were more concerned with the sub-licensed MPI library whose README says that it is in the public domain, yet there are some stray copyright notices with "all rights reserved" text in the files.)

vertex-four 10y ago
You're not writing Windows 7, is the thing, and there's other common tools in the area of text parsing/mangling which have much more standard licenses.
- kazinator 10y ago
  To frame things more constructively, what imagined situation are you most concerned about? "Here I am, using this program five years from now when, due to the licensing, <bad thing> happens." What is <bad thing>? For example, is it something you would suddenly like to do with the program, but are not permitted (yet would be if it used the original BSD license verbatim?)
  - kazinator 10y ago
    The <bad thing> is this: "I've been using this nice program for a while now and started redistributing it, and now my organization/customers/whoever are giving me grief due to its weirdly modified BSD-ish license." Grief is grief, even if those people are inflicting it for an unsubstantiated reason (fear of the unknown).
    - vertex-four 10y ago
      Indeed. I'm an occasional packager for a small Linux distro, and there's a reasonable chance this counts as a non-free license with your modifications... which in this distro means we couldn't distribute binary packages and installing it from source would have to have a user manually enable non-free packages.
      - vertex-four 10y ago
        (When I say "might", I mean "I have no idea, and I'm not a lawyer, and I can't afford one to look at your custom license".)

kazinator 10y ago

TXR 151 is released now, and uses a stock 2-Clause BSD license again. I made other changes, such as that for instance the license boxes in the Windows installer only have an "Acknowledge" button rather than "Agree". No mention is made anywhere that anyone has to agree to anything to use the software. A misleading diagnostic was also fixed in the program: if "txr --license" cannot find the LICENSE file it no longer falsely insinuates that the installation might be "unlicensed" (since there is no such licensing requirement that any copyright or license notice be present in executable images).