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adlai opened this issue Oct 8, 2020 · 2 comments
adlai changed the title remove scalplPlease remove the scalpl project from Quicklisp's default distOct 16, 2020

There should be no dependents, and although github does report a daily clone rate that is somewhere within the margin of measurement error, I don't quite care whether anyone has built upon the undocumented internals.

The following quote is included in case any others would be affected by the removal of this project; if you wish to discuss the issue, please do so, although in a venue other than the one from which the quote was taken!

07:37 * adlai is currently here for the purpose of condition-handling against https://github.com/quicklisp/quicklisp-projects/issues/1917
07:38 <adlai> scalpl is not officially unmaintained, thus, it is reasonable to close the issue, having denied the request, if that is the distributor's intent.
07:39 <adlai> the primary purpose for that removal request is, for lack of a better name, "defensive unlicensing"
07:40 <adlai> in case anyone is worried, the code is not covered by patents; and there is a significant, although low, probability that certain copies of it will soon be covered by aggressively copyleft licenses.
07:40 <adlai> thus, I wish to save anyone who automatically mirrors the default dist a massive headache, involving lots of unsolicited paperwork.
07:41 <adlai> ... and if you ever include me in your software development process, please consider inviting your lawyer to my job interview.
[...]
11:43 <Xach> adlai: why is the license changing?
11:52 <phoe> I see that scalpl is in the public license, according to its current ASD file
[...]
12:47 <adlai> Xach: a potential collaborator wants to use the AGPL; there is a remote possibility that chanl, which is a dependency, will be the subject of patent trolling lawsuits after I, and a potential collaborator, do an unhealthy amount of studying from various open-source implementations of similar ideas.
12:47 <adlai> there should be an "and" after the semicolon there; those are two separate instances of the risk of patent trolling going from zero to epsilon.
12:48 * adlai is tempted, around the two-thirds likelihood, to add some sorta "Please neither copyleft nor copyright your proposed contributions", although this is quite off-topic for here.
12:49 <adlai> ultimately, what seems best to me right now is for scalpl itself to be outside of the default dist, although it should not require any software outside of the default dist.
12:50 <adlai> as I've mentioned before, the current code is also replete with practices ranging from mediocre to worst.
13:06 * adlai should also take about a decade or few to get enough familiarity with the retail investor platforms so that scalpl can speak the protocol of at least one regular stock exchange
13:08 <adlai> so far, it has been mostly speaking to various 'greysuit' digital currency exchanges, during the happy years before they get love letters from government agencies; it is a fun game, and quite useful for a certain class of people, although still - quite a narrow niche.
13:21 <adlai> phoe: I explicitly wrote "public domain", and never included any copyright notice in the scalpl files, because I do not consider that tool an innovation, by this point in human history.
13:23 <adlai> if the specific names of classes that I divined out of smoke, coffee grounds, and conversations with my dog, along with the various inconsistencies of imprecise arithmetic found in that repository, happen to be considered an invention... that's someone else's problem :)