Re: Question about updating ascii.el file on the wiki

[Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null>]

"Steven W. Orr" <steveo@syslang.net> writes:

> There's  great little module I keep in my arsenal called ascii.el
>
> http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ascii.el
>
> It hasn't been updated since Apr 5, '07. When I compile it under 23.1.1, it
> complained about a few obsolete functions, so, I look the liberty of fixing them.
>
> In the spirit of giving back, should I upload it under a new filename? Or do I
> need to contact the author and hope he's still alive? Does anyone care?
>

the polite thing to do is to try and contact the author and provide him
with diffs he can apply. However, frequently an author of some small
utility has moved on and is no longer interested in maintaining the
code or cannot be contacted, which then leaves you with various options
depending on what sort of license the code is under. 

If the code is under an appropriate open source license, you can
probably modify it and make your updated version available without too
many problems. Note that some licenses will require that you make the
original available somewhere as well. 

In general, for small utility type bits of code like you refer to, I
think most people are fairly reasonable. As long as you can show you
made reasonable attempts to contact the author and get the changes added
and as long as you make sure the author is credited in any new version,
you will likely be OK and will have done the right thing. Of course,
this assumes the world is populated by reasonable people, which
unfortunately all too often, it isn't. 

Tim




-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au