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From: nather@utastro.UUCP (Ed Nather)
Newsgroups: net.micro,net.micro.apple
Subject: Re: Is there a micro vi?
Message-ID: <234@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 13-Jun-85 10:34:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: utastro.234
Posted: Thu Jun 13 10:34:59 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Jun-85 09:06:04 EDT
References: <1745@sunybcs.UUCP> <178@utastro.UUCP> <1561@orca.UUCP>
Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX
Lines: 51
Xref: watmath net.micro:10777 net.micro.apple:1973

> > You might consider JOVE, a public domain version of the EMACS editor, which
> > runs on the IBM PC under MS-DOS and 4.2bsd Unix, at least.  I have not used
> > it on 4.2bsd (yet) but it works well on the PC.  It's large (ca. 100K) but
> > far smaller than the PD EMACS from the GNU project, which is the full-blown
> > version.  Keyboard bindings are arbitrary in JOVE, but it lacks extensibility
> > and LISP support ... in my view, an excellent tradeoff for size.
> 
> Jove has been touted lately as a public domain editor.  This is not so.
> If you have the source code, take a look at "re.c", in which credit is
> given to AT&T's "ed" editor for the regular expression pattern match
> routines.
> 
> Jove should never have been ported to MSDOS.  Any non-Unix machine
> running Jove is guilty of software piracy.
> 
>   -=- Andrew Klossner   (decvax!tektronix!orca!andrew)       [UUCP]
>                         (orca!andrew.tektronix@csnet-relay)  [ARPA]

Here is the header message, verbatim, from re.c in the Jove editor source
distribution:

/* re.c */

/* JOVE/MSDOS. K. Mitchum 1/85 */
/* Modifications for personal use only. */
/* original code J. Payne LSRHS 5/83 */
/* Ken Mitchum */
/* University of Pittsburgh */
/* Decision Systems Laboratory */

/*
   Jonathan Payne at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School 5-25-83

   jove_re.c

   Much of this code was taken from /usr/src/cmd/ed.c.  It has been
   modified a lot and features have been added, but the general algorithm
   is the same. */

Note that the original source is quoted as "ed.c" but extensive modifications
have been made.  The "general algorithm" is the same, but an algorithm cannot
be copyrighted -- only the specific realization of it.  It is far from clear
to me that this constitutes software piracy in any form.

I solicit opinion from the net.  Is it piracy or not?

-- 
Ed Nather
Astronony Dept, U of Texas @ Austin
{allegra,ihnp4}!{noao,ut-sally}!utastro!nather
nather%utastro.UTEXAS@ut-sally.ARPA