Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!unido!mcshh!janhh!jan
From: jan@janhh.hanse.de (Jan Willamowius)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Mercury Authorship
Message-ID: <1027.03.91@janhh.hanse.de>
Date: 31 Mar 91 00:10:28 GMT
References: <1991Mar29.192644.6885@lsuc.on.ca>
Lines: 28

From article <1991Mar29.192644.6885@lsuc.on.ca>, by jimomura@lsuc.on.ca (Jim Omura):
> [...]  Now, getting to the problem:  I've just started to look at the
> source code to the Mercury UUCP clone with the intention of porting
> it to Sozobon C.

A complete rewrite or porting *ix tools is a more promising approach in
my view. Maybe you want to stay in contact with us German folks so we don't
do things twice. We already have quite a few extensions/replacements.

> [...]  But as I look at this Mercury package,
> something strange stands out.  There are NO credits given to ANYBODY
> else.  The author claims FULL ORIGINALITY of his code.  But when I
> looked at a couple of the files, some of the code looked sort of
> familiar.  Gee.  Didn't I see some of this before somewhere else?

Well, the UUCICO is based on the Mailtruk by John Logajan and credit is
given in the Source. For the rest of the C code take a closer look: the
reversed parameters in standard things like eg. strcpy tell me that he
can't have used more that a couple of lines from somebody else without
getting in a real mess. (aeh, more than he already did)

I'd be glad if he _had_ used some code written by somebody else. Sigh.

- Jan

--
Jan Willamowius, Nienredder 6, 2000 Hamburg 54, Germany
E-Mail: jan@janhh.hanse.de