Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 16:08:00 -0500 From: Joey Hess To: Mark Lindner Subject: gnu talkfilters Message-ID: <20041106210800.GA9585@kitenet.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="NzB8fVQJ5HfG6fxh" Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6+20040907i Content-Length: 4744 Lines: 108 --NzB8fVQJ5HfG6fxh Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I found your gnu talkfilters package today. I did not know this collection of filters existed, but I have been collecting filters since 1996 and ended up with a collection of some of the same filters. This has shipped in the Debian GNU/Linux distribution as the "filters" package for many years. Now that I've found your package, which includes some new and some improved filters, and I wonder if I can somehow merge my filters package into it to avoid duplicate work. One way that could be done is to add filters from my collection to the talkfilters. I'd be happy to see this happen if you want to add them, and if the licenses and implementation language are ok. Some of my filters are written in perl, so would not be usable with the gaim plugin. Not all of them are GPLed, and only the ones written by me have to possibility of easily having their copyright assigned to the FSF, if you do that. The filters in my collection that are missing from yours are: - censor (perl, GPL, copyright reassignable) - eleet (perl, GPL, probably similar to warez, copyright reassignable) - jibberish (perl, GPL, copyright reassignable) - kraut (lex, public domain) - ky00te (lex, GPL) - newspeak (lex, BSD-ish) - rasterman (perl, GPL) - spammer (perl, GPL, copyright reassignable) - studly (perl, public domain-ish) - uniencode (perl, GPL, copyright reassignable) - upside-down (perl, GPL, copyright reassignable) You can find the source here: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/filters It might be possible to use the talkfilters collection as the "upstream source" for the Debian filters package (or a new Debian talkfilters package). Unfortunatly this seems problimatic because of some copyright issues. I noticed that all of the filters in your package are marked as being GPL copyright by the FSF. I'm suprised to see that, because I had a lot of trouble tracking down the original authors of some of the same filters. All the filters in my collection are free software, but only because I rewrote several of them (eleet, fudd, chef, b1ff), and got copyright clarifications for others (cockney, jive, nyc, ken, ky00te, newspeak). Looks like you found a different, free implementations of b1ff. Much better than my reimplementation, probably. It seems to me that your fudd is based on a version from an unknown author. I have a copy of that old fudd.l from which yours is apparently derived, which is 37 lines and possibly too short to be copyrightable. I never found its author either, my replacement fudd is written in perl. I was never able to contact John Hagerman about the copyright of chef. Did you? I have a chef that is rewritten in perl but does not have exactly the same behavior as the original (see my README). I think that your cockney filter is oddly named. That was originally called the "ken" filter. The cockney filter in my collection was written by Daniel Klein, and I was able to get in touch with him and get it GPLed. It produces much more cockney english rather than the weird "rhyming slang" procuced by ken. I was able to contact ken's author in 2001 and he put it in the public domain. I used to include valspeak in my collection, but since I couldn't find its author either, I dropped it for copyright reasons. Your authors file lists no known author for kraut, however I have a slightly different version of the same kraut filter that was John Sparks and is in the public domain. How did you manage to get valspeak, postmodern, pansy, and fudd, whose authors are unknown to be GPLed? According to the info page, While all of these filters have been available in one form or another in the public domain for many years, the original authors of some of the filters are unknown. Reasonable attempts were made to find the authors and obtain written permission to repackage the filters as GNU software, but in some cases they could not be located. It seem to me questonable to slap the GPL and a FSF copyright on a file just because it is being distributed about the net. So I have some doubts about the validity of the copyright of some of the talkfilters. I would not be comfortable putting them in the Debian distribution with thieir copyright in this state. :-/ --=20 see shy jo --NzB8fVQJ5HfG6fxh Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" Content-Description: Digital signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFBjT0wd8HHehbQuO8RAqpMAKCeOw1y8cOPvEcUk3gUcTpUqVB41wCggCb5 mrpS924W/0jI2VIcqyw7LkI= =/OsH -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --NzB8fVQJ5HfG6fxh--