[PATCH] ls: clean up memory leak

[Rob Landley]

On Wednesday 03 May 2006 7:30 pm, Adam Hawes wrote:
> > > Can you post your license please, or if its a standard
> >
> > license, which
> >
> > > one ?
> >
> > Only my source: may safely be consumed by a BSD or GPL license.
> > As second author: previous license.
> > For patchs: no a license. If it have a hard work, then added
> > (c) line only
> > with comment the work.
>
> You were asked to post your license.  What you'd dribbled here is almost
> incomprehensible and isn't actually a license of any sort.  Your first
> point translates roughly to "my source is dual-licensed under BSD and GPL
> licenses".

Keep in mind that Vladimir doesn't speak english.  He uses a translation 
program, and if you say too much to him he doesn't bother to translate it.  
(It's as painful for him to read what you say as it is for you to read what 
he writes.)  This is why, after all these years, he's exactly as 
unintelligible as when he first started.  (If he was merely a poor english 
speaker when he started, he'd have improved by now.)

I _think_ what he meant is that his code, contributed to busybox, may be used 
under either a BSD or GPL license.  This conflicts with his earlier statement 
that you need his permission in order to modify any code he submitted to the 
tree, which is what I first objected to.

Now again, this might have been a translation issue.  (This sort of thing 
makes him darn frustrating to deal with, and it never gets any better because 
his babelfish program can't learn the language better, and using it prevents 
him from doing so either.)  What he _might_ have meant is that if he 
maintains an applet he'd appreciate being notified when the code is touched, 
as a courtesy issue.  That would have been reasonable, but that's not what he 
said.  You have to try to guess what he means, which is something I got tired 
of doing about the same time he started regularly starting each message to me 
with a string of insults.

This gets us to the short temper.  Asking for courtesy is not the same as 
throwing a tantrum.  The last time I touched uniq.c, Manuel reverted the 
patch.  I lived, and neither of us started name calling.  The last time other 
people touched code I'd written, I didn't revert their patches, although I've 
been known to clean up a few of them after the fact.  (The udhcp thing isn't 
a quality of code issue, it's an "I don't maintain the external tree, so I'm 
not going to package it, therefore I need a replacement I _can_ package in 
time for the next release" thing.  And if I just clone the directory again, 
somebody will come in and merge it back like they did last time...)

For a while I assumed his translation program inserted the insults too, but I 
got tired of dealing with it anyway.

> If you're so ashamed of your license that you won't share it with the
> public then perhaps you need to reconsider using it?  If it's so shameful
> that you can't tell people what it is then it can't be any good!

Vodz and I wasted a lot of effort talking past each other over the years, 
mostly due to translation issues and cultural differences.  Most of it was on 
this list since he's been spam blocking me from day 1 so I couldn't mail him 
privately even in response to an email he'd sent me privately.  Now I've 
returned the favor, and presumably we're both happier because of it.

It looks like shortly after I plonked him, he made an honest effort to clarify 
the situation as much as he can through his babelfish.  If somebody can 
confirm that his code is indeed usable under the terms of the BusyBox license 
("GPL v2 or later"), and wants to forward it to me for inclusion, I'll review 
it just like I would any other patch.  (I don't have to _like_ people in 
order to take code from, that restriction wouldn't be in the best interests 
of the project.)

That said, I'm not interested in talking to him myself anymore.  It's just not 
productive.

Rob
-- 
Never bet against the cheap plastic solution.