Subject: [bug#47943] [PATCH]: Gnu: Add Weir

From: Giovanni Biscuolo <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2021 15:24:47 +0200

Hi Guillaume and Sharlatan,

Guillaume Le Vaillant <[email-masked]> writes:

[...]

> Concerning point 1, there's a modified version of the code from
> "On Lisp" at <https://github.com/DalekBaldwin/on-lisp>.
> The file "on-lisp.asd" contains an extra indication by Paul Graham about
> the license:
>
> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
> Original code:
> This code is copyright 1993 by Paul Graham, but anyone who wants
> to use the code in any nonprofit activity, or distribute free
> verbatim copies (including this notice), is encouraged to do so.
>
> Modified code:
> As long as you tell people it's modified and link to
> the original, that's fine.  --pg
> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Unfortunately AFAIU the "Modified code" license addition (where does it
comes from?) still does not qualify the license as free.

"On Lisp" official page is here:
http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisptext.html, book and code (mechanically
extracted from the TeX source files of _On Lisp_) is copyright by Paul
Graham.  AFAIU today both the code and the book are freeware but not
free.

The original code (officially linked in the book web page) is here:
https://sep.yimg.com/ty/cdn/paulgraham/onlisp.lisp?t=1595850613&

A good chance to ask Paul Graham (and Dalek Baldwin... or Kyle Littler?)
to release the code as free software?  :-D

Thanks! Giovanni.

P.S.: I'm not familiar with Common Lisp but is it possible that the
functions from "On Lisp" has been somehow replaced or incorporated in a
proper library? ...I'm going to ask on guix-devel.

This alone will not fix the problem with "point 3." of the Weir license,
but would be a start.

-- 
Giovanni Biscuolo

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