coolidge@roy.cs.uiuc.edu (John Coolidge) (07/07/90)
Well, I've been busily porting and patching things to run under A/UX, and thought it might be nice to provide Commando dialogs for them. Apple seems to think Commando is where things are at, having provided Commando documents for everything from the big and complex (cc, ld, tar) to the extrement trivial (chase, yes). It's certainly a wonderful memory aid for those programs where you can't quite remember an option but are sure it exists. The access time is at least competitive with, and often superior to, that of the man pages. So Commando is great --- what's the problem? Well, there are all these great, inspirational, easy-to-copy Commando dialogs in /mac/lib/cmdo, and they all bear the inspirational words: /* Copyright Apple Computer, Inc. 1990 */ which tends to make me shy away from reuse, even when building dialogs for commands which are simply different versions of the provided commands (the GNU fileutilities, for instance, or GCC). Can someone from Apple post what they can find out about Apple's policy with respect to copying bits of Commando dialogs and/or patching existing dialogs to reflect new features for different versions of commands? Obviously, we're talking rebuilding things for new commands, not simply mailing out the whole mess to all comers. Certainly I can always start from scratch and build entirely new dialogs, but it's so much easier not reinventing the wheel... :-) --John -------------------------------------------------------------------------- John L. Coolidge Internet:coolidge@cs.uiuc.edu UUCP:uiucdcs!coolidge Of course I don't speak for the U of I (or anyone else except myself) Copyright 1990 John L. Coolidge. Copying allowed if (and only if) attributed. You may redistribute this article if and only if your recipients may as well.
lantz@Apple.COM (Bob Lantz) (07/09/90)
In article <1990Jul7.073600.3412@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu> coolidge@cs.uiuc.edu writes: >Well, I've been busily porting and patching things to run under A/UX, >and thought it might be nice to provide Commando dialogs for them. Great! I (and the rest of the A/UX Commandos) are glad you like Commando. >they all bear the inspirational words: >/* Copyright Apple Computer, Inc. 1990 */ Yes, to prevent them from being copied and used at our expense! >Can someone from Apple post what they can find out about Apple's >policy with respect to copying bits of Commando dialogs and/or >patching existing dialogs to reflect new features for different >versions of commands? I don't know what our official "policy" is, but I expect it is no different than the policy towards other source code we provide with A/UX. That is, modifying it for your own use is encouraged, but you should check with us before distributing it (or derived works) or including it in a product. I'll see if I can get more information on this. Until then, happy hacking! Bob Lantz A/UX Commando Team