Horton

Thread

  1. AW: [HACKERS] regular expressions from hell

    Andreas Zeugswetter <andreas.zeugswetter@telecom.at> — 1998-06-30T06:54:16Z

    >> Approved: info-gnu@gnu.org
>> 
>> The latest version of Rx, 1.9, is available on the web at:
>> 
>> 	http://users.lanminds.com/~lord
>> 	ftp://emf.net/users/lord/src/rx-1.9.tar.gz
>>  and at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/rx-1.9.tar.gz and mirrors of that 
>>                                                 site (see list below).
>
>The reason that we do not use this particular Regex package is that *it*
>falls under the "Almighty GPL", which conflicts with our Berkeley
>Copyright...

I thought we had an agreement that GNU software could be 
included in postgresql without imposing a GPL on postgresql,
as long as it is delivered in it's whole, probably in it's own subdirectory,
with the GPL only applying to this subdirectory.

Andreas

  2. Re: AW: [HACKERS] regular expressions from hell

    Marc G. Fournier <scrappy@hub.org> — 1998-06-30T11:54:31Z

    On Tue, 30 Jun 1998, Andreas Zeugswetter wrote:

> >> Approved: info-gnu@gnu.org
> >> 
> >> The latest version of Rx, 1.9, is available on the web at:
> >> 
> >> 	http://users.lanminds.com/~lord
> >> 	ftp://emf.net/users/lord/src/rx-1.9.tar.gz
> >>  and at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/rx-1.9.tar.gz and mirrors of that 
> >>                                                 site (see list below).
> >
> >The reason that we do not use this particular Regex package is that *it*
> >falls under the "Almighty GPL", which conflicts with our Berkeley
> >Copyright...
> 
> I thought we had an agreement that GNU software could be 
> included in postgresql without imposing a GPL on postgresql,
> as long as it is delivered in it's whole, probably in it's own subdirectory,
> with the GPL only applying to this subdirectory.

	Only those that fall under LGPL, not GPL...

  3. Re: AW: [HACKERS] regular expressions from hell

    David Gould <dg@illustra.com> — 1998-06-30T19:32:55Z

    > 
> On Tue, 30 Jun 1998, Andreas Zeugswetter wrote:
> 
> > >> Approved: info-gnu@gnu.org
> > >> 
> > >> The latest version of Rx, 1.9, is available on the web at:
> > >> 
> > >> 	http://users.lanminds.com/~lord
> > >> 	ftp://emf.net/users/lord/src/rx-1.9.tar.gz
> > >>  and at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/rx-1.9.tar.gz and mirrors of that 
> > >>                                                 site (see list below).
> > >
> > >The reason that we do not use this particular Regex package is that *it*
> > >falls under the "Almighty GPL", which conflicts with our Berkeley
> > >Copyright...
> > 
> > I thought we had an agreement that GNU software could be 
> > included in postgresql without imposing a GPL on postgresql,
> > as long as it is delivered in it's whole, probably in it's own subdirectory,
> > with the GPL only applying to this subdirectory.
> 
> 	Only those that fall under LGPL, not GPL...
> 

As it happens, rx-1.9 is not under either the GPL, or the LGPL. The author
offers a range of free and commercial licenses. It appears that we could
use this software, but the safest bet would be to contact the author and ask
as the license documents are not as well spelled out as the Gnu licences and
I may have misunderstood them.

-dg
 
David Gould            dg@illustra.com           510.628.3783 or 510.305.9468 
Informix Software  (No, really)         300 Lakeside Drive  Oakland, CA 94612
Q: Someone please enlighten me, but what are they packing into NT5 to
make it twice the size of NT4/EE?
A: A whole chorus line of dancing paperclips.  -- mcgredo@otter.mbay.net

  4. Re: AW: [HACKERS] regular expressions from hell

    Bruce Momjian <maillist@candle.pha.pa.us> — 1998-07-19T04:22:08Z

    > As it happens, rx-1.9 is not under either the GPL, or the LGPL. The author
> offers a range of free and commercial licenses. It appears that we could
> use this software, but the safest bet would be to contact the author and ask
> as the license documents are not as well spelled out as the Gnu licences and
> I may have misunderstood them.

David, I received this from the maintainer of our current regex library.
Seems like rx may be too buggy for us.  But we do need a faster regex
library.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Henry, will the new code you write be in the public domain, or only part
> of BSDI?

The new regex code will be under essentially the same redistribution terms
as the old stuff (in fact, slightly more generous).  BSDI didn't end up
contributing to this particular project, and the folks who did were all 
happy with open redistribution.

I should clarify that this code isn't "to be written" -- it already exists,
although I'm not entirely happy with it yet and want to limit distribution
until it's tidied up somewhat.

> Would you recommend we replace our regex stuff with something else?

My only real competitor :-) right now appears to be the GNU rx package,
and I have heard enough grumbling about it that I hesitate to recommend
it for general use.  It's faster but it has problems, is my impression;
I have not examined it closely.

> Do you have any patches you would like us to test?

Nothing quite yet.  Incidentally, the new code is a from-scratch
reimplementation, not just patches to the 4.4 one.

                                                           Henry Spencer
                                                       henry@zoo.toronto.edu




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