[plt-scheme] MrEd Designer.

Carl---
	There \does appear to be a license: it is included at the top of 
the main module, i.e: 

;; This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
;; under the terms of the GNU General Public License...

The GPL itself is included in several formats in the license directory.  
In what way was the license seen to be missing---is there a particular 
field in the PlaneT system that was blank?
	More generally: maybe my understanding of copyright law is flawed, 
but I thought that licenses were included to \reserve rights.  And if 
someone declines to reserve rights, couldn't you do just about anything 
you want with the code/works in question, short of plagiarizing them and 
claiming them as your own doing?  I thought the purpose of the GPL was to 
\prevent people slightly modifying free software and then charging for 
it, among other things.  

Nick Chubrich.

On Sat, 1 Apr 2006, Carl Eastlund wrote:

> What you can do in cases like this largely depends on what license the
> software is distributed under.  In this case, it looks like Mr. Lozi
> did not put up a license, so your hands may be tied until he responds.
>  I had a similar situation recently with some old Scheme code I found
> online with no license and an unresponsive author.
> 
> In the long-term perspective of PLaneT packages, I think the package
> submission process needs to put more emphasis on each author providing
> a license for their package.  (I know I'm guilty of submitting a
> package without remembering to open-source the code.)  It probably
> doesn't make a lot of sense to even allow unlicensed package.  This is
> a larger issue for a different thread or even a different list - but
> in summation, you're right, widely distributed, unmaintained,
> unlicensed code is an annoyance at best.
> 
> --Carl
> 
> On 4/1/06, Nicholas Chubrich <chubrich at cs.brandeis.edu> wrote:
> > Robby---
> >         The problem is, I \haven't heard back from him, and I don't know
> > if I ever will.  I think putting it up under my name would be a bit much
> > seeing as I scarcely spent an hour fixing it with the debugger.  But I
> > can't believe that code should be left nonworking because the original
> > designer of it is out of town.  I suppose I could post it with his name,
> > but put my own down for contact, though as I said before I can't really do
> > that much with it.  What would you say the etiquette is, on the whole?
> > Since a lot of PlaneT packages are broken by PLT updates, this problem
> > probably comes up a lot, and there should be a standard way of dealing
> > with it.  Many of the broken packages are probably easily fixed, and it
> > seems a shame to leave them unuseable.
> >
> > Nick
>