ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) (02/07/88)
It has recently come to my attention that there is a benchmark
program floating around which contains a collection of operations
on arbitrary precision integers. These operations form the bulk
of the file, and include predicates with names like
addn/5
divq/4
comz/5
and the data structure used to represent numbers is
[d0,d1,...dk] ~~ d0 + R*(d1 + R*(... + R*dk) ...)
where R is 10000 on 32-bit machines or 100000 on DEC-10s
to represent non-negative integers
separate sign (+ or -) and [d0,...,dk]
to represent signed integers
number(Sign,Numerator,Denominator)
where gcd(Numerator,Denominator) = 1 or 0
to represent rationals.
This collection of operations comes from either
- the freely available DEC-10 Prolog file EVAL.PL, or
- the Quintus Prolog file library(long).
But the "Author:" comment has been removed.
The DEC-10 Prolog version of the rational arithmetic package is
freely available, and I have no objection to anyone using and
distributing it. However, I am very upset that my name has been
taken off it. Taking the author's name off a program that you
got for nothing is a mean and contemptible thing to do, unless
of course you have the author's permission. (If you make a
small extract from the program for instructional purposes, that's
another matter. If someone had a file containing one or two of
the operations, I wouldn't expect them to retain my name on that.)
I am not going to name names, because I believe that the people who
distributed the copy I saw are at least two steps away from the culprit.
So if you have a copy of this program, don't think that I am accusing
the person you got it from.
In general:
- the DEC-10 Prolog files which I sent to {SU-SCORE} may freely be
used and distributed, even in commercial systems.
- there is no *legal* requirement on anyone to do anything
in particular.
- but it is good manners to leave the name of the original author
in the source code, and if the code is used in a commercial
product, it is good manners to credit the original author in
the documentation of the product.
I was really hurt and outraged by this.