Original authors and licensing of cdecl / c++decl

[richard.wm.jones]

I'm trying to track down the original authors of cdecl.

cdecl was dropped from Fedora Core a few years ago because of
licensing concerns. The original postings to comp.sources.unix (vols
6 & 14 in 1986 and 1988 respectively) have no licensing information.
In order to get cdecl back in we would need a definitive statement
from key original authors that the code can be distributed under a
free license (eg. GPL or BSD-style licenses, or even public domain).

I already wrote privately to Tony Hansen who was involved early on.
Chris Torek posts here, but I can't send him email. Graham Ross,
according to my researches, last worked at Thinkshare, but email to
his last known address there bounces. Are there other people who
contributed major parts, and where do they work now?

Rich.

 

[Chris Torek]

I'm trying to track down the original authors of cdecl.

cdecl was dropped from Fedora Core a few years ago because of
licensing concerns. The original postings to comp.sources.unix (vols
6 & 14 in 1986 and 1988 respectively) have no licensing information.
In order to get cdecl back in we would need a definitive statement
from key original authors that the code can be distributed under a
free license (eg. GPL or BSD-style licenses, or even public domain).

I already wrote privately to Tony Hansen who was involved early on.
Chris Torek posts here, but I can't send him email. ...

(Well, you can if you manage to find my work email address, but
I do not advertise that one. )

If I ever did any work on cdecl (which is possible), it was
relatively minor.

It might be nice to produce a new version of cdecl "from scratch"
(but I am not volunteering ). Perhaps this could be one of
those comp.lang.c projects that people try to start now and again.

 

[Keith Thompson]

It might be nice to produce a new version of cdecl "from scratch"
(but I am not volunteering ). Perhaps this could be one of
those comp.lang.c projects that people try to start now and again.

If somebody does this, I have a request: don't make "ptr" and
"pointer" reserved in declarations. I've run into this a number of
times, for example:

% cdecl
Type `help' or `?' for help
cdecl> explain int *ptr
syntax error
cdecl> explain int *pntr
declare pntr as pointer to int
cdecl>

 

[richard.wm.jones]

(Well, you can if you manage to find my work email address, but
I do not advertise that one. )

Thanks for replying Chris. I was emailing your "web"
address, but with no luck.

If I ever did any work on cdecl (which is possible), it was
relatively minor.

Your name is on the first upload (1986), but it looks like you were
uploading it on behalf of the missing Graham Ross.

It might be nice to produce a new version of cdecl "from scratch"
(but I am not volunteering ). Perhaps this could be one of
those comp.lang.c projects that people try to start now and again.

I would prefer to avoid having to reimplement this. A version
exists and it could be "freed" with the say-so from two or three
people. It's a shame that (C) law forces me to do this with
ancient code which is all but abandoned, but that's a discussion
for another place.

Rich.

 

[Tweedale]

I would prefer to avoid having to reimplement this. A version
exists and it could be "freed" with the say-so from two or three
people. It's a shame that (C) law forces me to do this with
ancient code which is all but abandoned, but that's a discussion
for another place.

I'm confused. Debian has a version of cdecl that seems to be under the
GPL and currently maintained:

From

This package was debianized by Fredrik Hallenberg <[email protected]> on
Wed, 7 Jul 1999 21:39:17 +0200.

It was downloaded from ftp://ftp.cc.gatech.edu/pub/linux/devel/lang/c

Upstream Author: David R. Conrad <[email protected]>

Copyright:

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any
later version.

<snip>

Is this copyright information incorrect? If so, you should file a bug
report against the Debian package. If not, what's wrong with the version
of cdecl in Debian?

 

[richard.wm.jones]

I'm confused. Debian has a version of cdecl that seems to be under the
GPL and currently maintained: [...]

Is this copyright information incorrect? If so, you should file a bug
report against the Debian package. If not, what's wrong with the version
of cdecl in Debian?

I've written to the maintainer of the Debian package to see if he can
clarify. At the moment there's no evidence that cdecl was relicensed
under GPL, but thanks for pointing this one out.

Rich.