Re: [Savannah-hackers] savannah.gnu.org: submission of Pliant

[Jaime E. Villate]

On Wed, Jan 09, 2002 at 06:45:10AM -0500, address@hidden wrote:
> 
> A package was submitted to savannah.gnu.org.
> This mail was sent to address@hidden, address@hidden
> 
> Patrice Ossona de Mendez <address@hidden> described the package as follows:
> License: gpl
> Other License: 
> Package: Pliant
> System name: pliant

Please notice that in order to apply the GPL correctly
(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html):

  "You should also include a copy of the license itself somewhere in the
  distribution of your program. In GNU programs the license is usually in a
  file called COPYING; it should be the plain ASCII text version of the
  license."

The only copy of the GPL I could found was inside
pliant/pliant/welcome/copyright.html but it is not the ASCII text version of
the original GPL and it has some extra text at the beginning. The GPL must be
copied verbatim; no modifications or additions are allowed
(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html).

When you registered your project, you selected the license option "GNU General
Public License V2 or later", but in your copyright.html page and in the
copying permission statements of your programs I see that you have excluded
the "V2 or later clause"

You are not doing anything wrong by restricting to
version 2 only of the GPL, and your software continues to be free
software. However, the FSF doesn't want to accept that license in its hosts
because it would be compatible with GPL v2, but wouldn't be compatible with
the next version. And this is something that the FSF wants to discourage.
If you want to host your project in Savannah, you should change your license
and either accept "GNU General Public License V2 or later" or any of the other
GPL-compatible licenses and then register your project again.

Please keep in mind that if you decide to accept Savannah's policy of "GPL V2
or later", if a version 3 comes out nobody in Savannah would go and update
the license information of your project; it would continue to be "GPL V2 or
later" if you wanted it that way and it would not cause any conflicts for
Savannah. And if a user wants to abide by the rules of V2, because he/she finds
it better than V3, they can choose to do that. The copying permission
statement gives them that option:
  "...you can redistribute it and/or modify
   it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
   the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
   (at your option) any later version."

> Project for a coherent minimal set of tools needed by most users, in a
> source code of small size using Pliant language (that focuses on pertinent
> indications, although allowing programmer\'s intervention at any level of
> abstraction and any general rule explicit breaking)

It took me some time and web surfing to realize that your project is a new
programming language. I suggest that in your description you write something
such as: "Pliant is a programming language and... It combines features of
high-level and low-level languages, etc."
If you want to attract new users, something like that should go at the
beginning of Pliant's webpage too.

Best regards,
Jaime