Re: bug in ed-0.3/ed-0.4

[John Cowan]

Andrew L. Moore scripsit:

> 1) ed 0.2 has some serious bugs - e.g., buffer overflows, unconditional
> paging, longjmp vulnerabilities.  I can make a small patch to correct
> the worst of these.
> 
> 2) Code that I submitted as candidate for ed 0.3.  That work was
> pretty much completed by me back in November, 2006.  It is much
> cleaner, more correct and more robust than ed-0.2.  One problem is
> that it has i18n support, but no translations. I am also in the
> process of rewriting the documentation, which doesn't come easy to
> me.

Release them both!  Release early and often.  Worry about converging
later, after other people have had a chance to look at it.  Make
them available on savannah or the forge of your choice, or just at
a web or FTP site.

> There are a couple issues.  It would nice if I had some say in who
> my successor is. That doesn't seem to be FSF policy, which I hope
> will one day be corrected

Fortunately, that affects only the official FSF release.  Anyone can
become the de facto 'ed' maintainer by saying so, and if you put your
weight behind that person, you add credibility.

"When you lose interest in a program, your last duty to it is to hand
it off to a competent successor."  --esr

> The other is that fixes were offered,
> but permission was evidently not granted to release them under a
> dual GNU/BSD-like license so that they could be folded back into
> the BSD release, of which GNU ed 0.2 is a port.  I consider that
> another weakness of FSF policy that I hope can be reexamined one
> day.

If you wrote the fixes, then you can release them under any license
you want, provided you do it before you sign over your copyright
ownership to the FSF.

-- 
There is no real going back.  Though I          John Cowan
may come to the Shire, it will not seem         address@hidden
the same; for I shall not be the same.          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
I am wounded with knife, sting, and tooth,
and a long burden.  Where shall I find rest?           --Frodo