Subject: Re: Time for ksh93?
To: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Andreas_K=E4h=E4ri?= <ak@freeshell.org>
From: Greg A. Woods <woods@weird.com>
List: netbsd-users
Date: 03/11/2002 02:14:49
[[ This is a tech-pkg issue.  Followups redirected. ]]

[ On Monday, March 11, 2002 at 16:31:11 (+1300), Andreas Kähäri wrote: ]
> Subject: Time for ksh93?
>
> Is someone working on packaging the real Korn Shell (ksh93, [1])
> for NetBSD yet?  Or do we wait until AT&T decides to loosen its
> licensing [2] a bit more first?

I've been wondering why nobody's created a pkgsrc module ever since
March 1, 2000, i.e. two years ago, when the source was first made
available.  I've been using it on occasion for a long time now (and
before that I used the binaries, as I have a copy of the book they were
initially made available with).

But why wait for goodness sake!?!?!?!?

What could their copyright licence possibly have to do with anything but
the terms and manner of distribution?!?!?!?

A pkgsrc module does not contain a copy of the original work and it does
not "cause" the distribution of the original work.  Any patches it may
have to include are "fair use" (despite I believe, though IANL, attempts
by the license to control patches -- IIRC there's now even case law in
the USA declaring patches as "fair use").

Just don't put the original source or any binaries on any FTP sites or
on any distribution media and you'll be just fine.

	RESTRICTED=		"Terms for redistribution are not yet clear."
	NO_BIN_ON_CDROM=	${RESTRICTED}
	NO_BIN_ON_FTP=		${RESTRICTED}
	NO_SRC_ON_CDROM=	${RESTRICTED}
	NO_SRC_ON_FTP=		${RESTRICTED}

IANAL, but it seems pretty clear to me thet since the code is available
anonymously on the Internet, and since the license allows for (limited)
redistribution of both the original code and derived works, none of the
above should be necessary.  However I'm not the one going to be doing
any redistribution....  :-)

> Other free Unix-projects (Debian GNU/Linux and OpenBSD) have
> been discussing packaging ksh93 for their respective systems,

OpenBSD's "ports" tree has had a KornShell module (in shells/ast-ksh)
since July 12, 2001.  Their "Makefile" currently (v. 1.5) says:

 PERMIT_PACKAGE_CDROM=   No
 PERMIT_PACKAGE_FTP=     No
 PERMIT_DISTFILES_CDROM= No
 PERMIT_DISTFILES_FTP=   No

FreeBSD's "ports" tree has had a KornShell module (in shells/ksh93)
since November 26, 1999 for the binary distribution, and since February
26, 2001 for the source release (a few days before the official first
release claimed on the web site ;-).  Their "Makefile currently
(v. 1.17) says:

 RESTRICTED=	"Source recipient must acknowledge license"

(which isn't true)

I'm sure a port of either of their "ports" to pkgsrc would be nearly trivial.

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;  <gwoods@acm.org>;  <g.a.woods@ieee.org>;  <woods@robohack.ca>
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