Re: [RFC v4] system_data_types.7: Document sigval, ssize_t, suseconds_t, time_t, timer_t, timespec & timeval

Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)
2020-09-16T17:45:35Z

Hello Andries,

It's kind of you to reply; thank you!

On Wed, 16 Sep 2020 at 12:06, Andries E. Brouwer <Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Sep 16, 2020 at 10:03:13AM +0200, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote:
> > [CC += AEB]
> >
> >> Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) dixit:
> >>
> >>>> +.\" %%%LICENSE_START(VERBATIM)
> >>>> +.\" Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
> >>>> +.\" manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
> >>>> +.\" preserved on all copies.
> >>>> +.\"
> >>>> +.\" Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
> >>>> +.\" manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the
> >>>> +.\" entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
> >>>> +.\" permission notice identical to this one.
> >>>> +.\"
> >>>> +.\" Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this
> >>>> +.\" manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date. The author(s) assume no
> >>>> +.\" responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from
> >>>> +.\" the use of the information contained herein. The author(s) may not
> >>>> +.\" have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual,
> >>>> +.\" which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working
> >>>> +.\" professionally.
> >>>> +.\"
> >>>> +.\" Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by
> >>>> +.\" the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work.
> >>>> +.\" %%%LICENSE_END
> >>
> >> I severely object.
> >
> > The "verbatim" license has been the most widely used license in
> > manual pages, almost since the inception of the project 27 years
> > ago. (Currently more than half of the pages carry this license.)
> >
> > I don't know the origin of the license (perhaps AEB does),
>
> Digging through old sources reveals:
>
> I started maintaing man-pages in 1995.
> My first release was man-pages-1.6.
> That release contained 245 man pages with the above license.
>
> The first release that had the above license was man-pages-1.4,
> released Sep 1994 by Rik Faith.
> It contained 234 man pages with the above license.
> man-pages-1.4.Announce describes that there are now
> 238 pages with "verbatim copying" and
> 41 pages with "GNU General Public License".
>
> Earlier, man-pages-1.3 (released Jun 1994) by Rik Faith had
> messy copyright statements or nothing at all, and Rik Faith made
> for 1.4 a serious attempt at providing each page with a proper license.
>
> So, this text came from Rik Faith.
> It mentions "this manual page", so was probably written
> especially for this manpage collection.

Thanks for the insight. I had noticed that the license wasn't there
right at the start, but that it appeared very soon afterwards. It
hadn't occurred to me that perhaps Rik might be the author of the
license.

> You might ask him for further details.

I tried a few times over the years to contact Rik on other matters,
but either I was using the wrong channels, or he didn't reply. I'll
try again via another channel.

Cheers,

Michael

--
Michael Kerrisk
Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/