Re: copyright problem with install-sh, request for clean-room rewrite

[Thomas Dickey]

On Mon, Sep 03, 2018 at 09:13:13AM -0500, Eric Blake wrote:
...
> Note that the most recent version of 'install-sh' as installed by Automake
> states:
> # Copyright (C) 1994 X Consortium

looking at my collection of untarred X sources, there's an issue with that:

The comment just before reads something like

# This originates from X11R5 (mit/util/scripts/install.sh), which was
# later released in X11R6 (xc/config/util/install.sh) with the
# following copyright and license.

however -

the first mention of copyright for any version of that file in X
sources was in 2003 (in xterm's sources), citing 1991.  xterm has
the 1994 date from autoconf (i.e.,. a secondhand report).

X's sources don't have that file...

The X11R5 file has this comment (no copyright notice):

#
# install - install a program, script, or datafile
#
# $XConsortium: install.sh,v 1.2 89/12/18 14:47:22 jim Exp $
#
# This script is compatible with the BSD install script, but was written
# from scratch.
#

There's an additional twist:  Thomas Roell made a script
mit/server/ddx/x386/etc/install.sh derived from the X11R5
mit/util/scripts/install.sh, adding a copyright notice:

# Copyright 1990,91 by Thomas Roell, Dinkelscherben, Germany.

With all that, the available information shows that someone "fixed" things
in the early 2000s by adding a copyright date to address the derived work.

Perhaps autoconf's source repo has additional information.
As is, the copyright was apparently not applied by the owner of the file.

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey <address@hidden>
https://invisible-island.net
ftp://ftp.invisible-island.net

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