Re: Quasisyntax broken?

[Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com>]

Hi,

On Sat 25 Jul 2009 23:30, Andreas Rottmann <a.rottmann@gmx.at> writes:

> Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com> writes:
>
>> On Fri 24 Jul 2009 00:35, Andreas Rottmann <a.rottmann@gmx.at> writes:
>>
>>> Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> On Fri 03 Jul 2009 02:04, Andreas Rottmann <a.rottmann@gmx.at> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> Playing around with Guile's now-in-core syntax-case support (using Git
>>>>> HEAD as of today), I found that quasisyntax seems quite broken:
>>>>
>>>> We've spoken over IRC since then, but for those that do not frequent
>>>> there, it's simply not implemented. You can implement it in terms of
>>>> with-syntax, though. Did you have a patch for that, Andreas?
>>>>
>>> Yep, the patch is attached:
>>
>> What is the license of this code?
>>
> It's under the (unmodified) MIT license, see
> <http://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-process.html>

Hm. I have no idea what this means for Guile. It seems we need either a
disclaimer or an assignment. Now, it seems that something happened in
the past with psyntax which would seem to go against this, though:

commit 9d1a28471c4e69ee151a85d44f8888a69bf102ec
Author: Jim Blandy <jimb@red-bean.com>
Date:   Mon Oct 19 13:43:50 1998 +0000

    We can't include Kent Dybvig's syntax-case macro expander in the
    core Guile distribution, because we don't have copyright
    assignments for this code.  We can certainly distribute them as a
    separate package, but Guile should be FSF code.
    * syncase.scm, psyntax.pp, psyntax.ss: Removed.
    * Makefile.am (ice9_sources): Removed syncase.scm, psyntax.pp, and
    psyntax.ss.
    * Makefile.in: Regenerated.
    * Makefile.am (ice9_sources): Add getopt-gnu-style.scm.
    * Makefile.in: Regenerated.

But then:

commit a63812a2fef2f81b8c4eca04c858e42b62e455f9
Author: Jim Blandy <jimb@red-bean.com>
Date:   Mon Oct 19 15:38:05 1998 +0000

    Talked to Stallman.  Actually, the syntax-case copyright is no
    problem.  Duh.
    * Makefile.am (ice9_sources): Revert last change.
    * syncase.scm, psyntax.pp, psyntax.ss: Added again.
    * Makefile.in: Regeneretade.

So I don't know what the deal is. I'll defer to Neil and Ludovic.

> it would be (IMHO) kinda dumb to have to ignore/rewrite all the
> perfectly (L)GPL-compatible BSD- and MIT-licensed code that's out
> there, as you cannot expect the respective authors to all sign
> copyright assignments for Guile...

Yes, I agree.

Cheers,

Andy
-- 
http://wingolog.org/