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From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Obnoxious software (was Re: C license agreements)
Message-ID: <870@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 23-Jul-87 13:42:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: bsu-cs.870
Posted: Thu Jul 23 13:42:28 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 25-Jul-87 11:19:57 EDT
References: <8387@brl-adm.ARPA> <6146@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Followup-To: comp.misc
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 33

In article <6146@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>I think Ken & Dennis would have croaked anybody who tried to make
>UNIX utilities print out identifying messages etc.

Wish Ken and Dennis could get a lynch mob together.  If you use
Microsoft's make utility to compile a collection of say 20 C files
using Microsoft's C compiler, and then link them with Microsoft's
linker, you get a steady barrage of obnoxious copyright messages:

     one from the make program when it starts up
     20 from the C compiler, one for each file compiled
     one from the linker

Datalight C is just as offensive, more so if you don't use a switch to
suppress a message from each pass of the compiler.  VAX/VMS is also
frequently loud, for example, there's no way of convincing the DIFF
command to not print a copy of the command line that you typed, along
with a lot of fancy page headers, or to convince the LOGOUT command not
to tell you that you just logged out a process (as if you didn't
know).  The chatterbox fever is even catching AT&T, for the dircmp
utility insists on invoking pr to filter its output and add a lot of
cute headers and page formatting etc.

Now, a solution for the paranoid.  You CAN display a copyright message
without harrassing the user.  Just do it only if your program is
invoked without the proper arguments.  Along with the usage message,
you can print a brief and courteous copyright message if you really
have to.  If your software is provided under a license, you may not
even have to do that, so try and give the user a break.

Followups to comp.misc.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  {ihnp4,seismo}!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!d: <1