FreeTDS Development Group

["Craig A. Berry" <craigberry AT mac.com>]

At 10:34 AM -0500 11/5/04, Lowden, James K wrote:
> > Does anyone know of a public domain snprintf that is complete and
> > robust or can anyone shed further light on the licensing issue?

>It looks like Freddy mooted the point, and the code is better for it.

Yes, but the general problem could come up again, so I'm happy to have your 
explanation.

>As for the licensing.  FreeTDS is primarily a source distribution; as
>source, there is no licensing issue.  Binaries are of course another
>matter, but only an extremely small set of architectures would need
>replacements/snpringtf.c (were it there).  Those architectures would be
>prohibited from distributing a binary.  But that's not a huge problem;
>after all, how many VMS-for-2-plus-versions-ago binaries are going to be
>(publicly) redistributed? 

You'd be surprised.  Since the C compiler is an add-on product (and not 
cheap), it's common to distribute packages in binary (with source included if 
the license requires it).  People distributing binaries typically build on 
the oldest version they can find in order to be compatible with the widest 
range of versions.

>Another way around the issue is to make real use of dynamic libraries.
>Does VMS have that these days? (It's been a long time for me.)

Yes, but it calls them shareable images.  I forget if it got them in 1978 
(v1.0) or 1980 (v2.0) since I was not much into computers yet back then :-).

> snprintf
>or whatever could be kept out of the source distribution, but offered on
>our server as a stand-alone library.  Build it and install it on your
>system, then build and install FreeTDS, linking to it. 
>
>Either way, we just make sure the docs and build scripts say, "You can't
>include GPL code in any binary distribution of FreeTDS".  When that
>cramps someone's style, we look for a convenient, legal solution. 

There are various ways of requiring someone to add their own xyz() function 
somewhere downstream.  You could require them to provide 
src/replacements/xyz.c at build time, an object file or library at link time, 
or an entry in a shareable image at run time.  These are all enough of a 
hassle that I'm glad we've dodged the issue in the snprintf case.
-- 
________________________________________
Craig A. Berry
mailto:craigberry AT mac.com

"... getting out of a sonnet is much more
 difficult than getting in."
                 Brad Leithauser