Copyright assignment

Copyright assignment

[Axel Forsman]

Hi:

I would like to sign some copyright assignment form of some form.
Where/how do I do that? I am in Sweden if that matters.

(The main reason being that I have written a package
that I believe is a good fit for GNU ELPA:
http://url8156.axelf.se/ls/click?upn=OEjhiLt4EQwBP7BMdu61cV4sca9Texj-2F9QlDxDS4hNBzphhZj1LqyzF7Mjuo7JxFTu0k_1I2drHf7TOM-2BFjFYSrHxnLAP9jSFTsULAwXlGneTUPJdKtJ1xS-2B5ZqNyLnAnmUKA0x6ctQ-2B44uSRxDz7aBJW-2B8To7r4MEjj2wJwGn6ZoyCFQDFM0GlKWhVNVfsdWf3ffeqLnVztm0oso5TvqZiDe6edsWfu3Q5NRX05yLYF2LDXwJX-2Bj3Ov-2B4Rwa45sYQuvpvAreshwDfJuj7kn8O8wzYA-3D-3D )


Thanks
Axel Forsman

Re: Copyright assignment

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Axel Forsman <axel@axelf.se>
> Cc: 
> Date: Sat, 09 Sep 2023 15:43:01 +0000 (UTC)
> 
> Hi:
> 
> I would like to sign some copyright assignment form of some form.
> Where/how do I do that? I am in Sweden if that matters.
> 
> (The main reason being that I have written a package
> that I believe is a good fit for GNU ELPA:
> http://url8156.axelf.se/ls/click?upn=OEjhiLt4EQwBP7BMdu61cV4sca9Texj-2F9QlDxDS4hNBzphhZj1LqyzF7Mjuo7JxFTu0k_1I2drHf7TOM-2BFjFYSrHxnLAP9jSFTsULAwXlGneTUPJdKtJ1xS-2B5ZqNyLnAnmUKA0x6ctQ-2B44uSRxDz7aBJW-2B8To7r4MEjj2wJwGn6ZoyCFQDFM0GlKWhVNVfsdWf3ffeqLnVztm0oso5TvqZiDe6edsWfu3Q5NRX05yLYF2LDXwJX-2Bj3Ov-2B4Rwa45sYQuvpvAreshwDfJuj7kn8O8wzYA-3D-3D )

Thanks, I sent the CA form off list.

Re: Copyright assignment

[Eshel Yaron]

Hello Axel,

> (The main reason being that I have written a package
> that I believe is a good fit for GNU ELPA:
> [derl.el])

This looks interesting, but I think I spot a subtle (albeit classic) bug:
It seems that you define a bidirectional conversion between Elisp and
Erlang, without taking into account the ambiguity of nil in Elisp.
Namely, in Elisp, the empty list is a symbol.  Your conversion maps
Erlang atoms to Elisp symbols, and AFAICT it will happily map the atom
nil to the symbol nil, while in the other direction (Elisp to Erlang),
nil is mapped to the empty list.  That means that the Erlang improper
list [foo|nil] maps to the proper Elisp list (foo) which then maps to
the proper Erlang list [foo].

If you know for sure that you don't have any nil atoms coming from your
Erlang code, that shouldn't be a problem.  But in general it might lead
to surprising results.


Best,

Eshel

Re: Copyright assignment

[Axel Forsman]

Eshel Yaron <me@eshelyaron.com> writes:

> Your conversion maps
> Erlang atoms to Elisp symbols, and AFAICT it will happily map the atom
> nil to the symbol nil, while in the other direction (Elisp to Erlang),
> nil is mapped to the empty list.  That means that the Erlang improper
> list [foo|nil] maps to the proper Elisp list (foo) which then maps to
> the proper Erlang list [foo].

Yup, I am aware that this is something that will have to be fixed eventually.
However, for now I do not foresee it being too much of a problem in practice,
since, in my experience, nil is not used as an atom much
in favor of undefined/false/error/etc.


Thanks for taking a look
Axel

Re: Copyright assignment

[Eshel Yaron]

Axel Forsman <axel@axelf.se> writes:

> Eshel Yaron <me@eshelyaron.com> writes:
>
>> Your conversion maps Erlang atoms to Elisp symbols, and AFAICT it
>> will happily map the atom nil to the symbol nil, while in the other
>> direction (Elisp to Erlang), nil is mapped to the empty list.  That
>> means that the Erlang improper list [foo|nil] maps to the proper
>> Elisp list (foo) which then maps to the proper Erlang list [foo].
>
> Yup, I am aware that this is something that will have to be fixed
> eventually.  However, for now I do not foresee it being too much of a
> problem in practice, since, in my experience, nil is not used as an
> atom much in favor of undefined/false/error/etc.
>

Yes, it's probably used less often than those other atoms, but it's
definitely in use: there are quite some uses of the atom nil in the core
Erlang/OTP distribution, as well as in the main Elixir repo, for example.

The problem is that any code that uses the atom nil, whether knowingly
or unknowingly, would potentially run into some tricky issues if it were
to communicate with Emacs via this library.  I think that it's also a
bit hard to fix in a backwards-compatible manner, so I wonder if you
have anything in particular in mind for that eventual fix.  If it's
fixed but it's not backwards-compatible, then any Elisp code that would
rely on this library to communicate with Erlang might have to be
adjusted, for instance because the representation of atoms/symbols would
have to change.

>
> Thanks for taking a look
> Axel

Re: Copyright assignment

[Axel Forsman]

Eshel Yaron <me@eshelyaron.com> writes:

> Yes, it's probably used less often than those other atoms, but it's
> definitely in use: there are quite some uses of the atom nil in the core
> Erlang/OTP distribution, as well as in the main Elixir repo, for example.

(Many uses in OTP are for using an atom to indicate [],
or will not otherwise be returned from RPC calls in normal usage.
But it is a poor excuse for not fixing the caveat.)

> The problem is that any code that uses the atom nil, whether knowingly
> or unknowingly, would potentially run into some tricky issues if it were
> to communicate with Emacs via this library.  I think that it's also a
> bit hard to fix in a backwards-compatible manner, so I wonder if you
> have anything in particular in mind for that eventual fix.  If it's
> fixed but it's not backwards-compatible, then any Elisp code that would
> rely on this library to communicate with Erlang might have to be
> adjusted, for instance because the representation of atoms/symbols would
> have to change.

I pushed the fix I had in mind in commit df6d8a7 [1].
It would also be neat to make the representation configurable,
similar to what most JSON libraries in dynamically-typed languages do,
but that is very low on my list of priorities.

[1]: http://url8156.axelf.se/ls/click?upn=OEjhiLt4EQwBP7BMdu61cV4sca9Texj-2F9QlDxDS4hNAJQRktQfhHyVAjxWE-2BxYhD6rzUsQ-2FhslJnmq6RI2SMvRnuyJ-2FNrEFQELYje065Rxl-2FgrssbC-2BOXwN22MiOjir-2Fp2UQ_1I2drHf7TOM-2BFjFYSrHxnLAP9jSFTsULAwXlGneTUPL4uZsQNqQtWWrZN-2Bl8JiQSq9wapel4vlP7IOIPq4cZmME5x8VXuna0nj7xxySKqYB6S3FsLUceFImsD-2FDvpzUOb7PJrWF7n7-2BtnzBBogLzTds9oBy7seiURzURMAhmI38IR-2BDY2vMjYFz-2Bl2VTTq0JTrGDlIkBvo5sYkQYW7aHlw-3D-3D


/Axel

Copyright assignment or what?

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

I think this thread is not about copyright assignments any more.
How about giving it a subject field that fits the actual subject?

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)