Bug #20395: Invalid license note in vsnprintf.c

• Status: Open
• Assignee: -
• Target version: -
• ruby -v: ruby 3.3.0 (2023-12-25 revision 5124f9ac75) [x86_64-linux]
• Backport: 3.0: UNKNOWN, 3.1: UNKNOWN, 3.2: UNKNOWN, 3.3: UNKNOWN

[vo.x (Vit Ondruch)]

I am looking into Ruby licenses and I stumble upon vsnprintf.c, namely about these lines:

/*
 * IMPORTANT NOTE:
 * --------------
 * From ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/4bsd/README.Impt.License.Change
 * paragraph 3 above is now null and void.
 */

I doubt the note is valid since git|626f1ee196fe06514d66771ff0e3f82d7686af25, which actually removes the 3rd clause, while the (broken) URL refers to "4bsd". Can somebody please review? The note from the URL can be likely viewed e.g. here

[nobu (Nobuyoshi Nakada)]

Should we remove that note simply?

[vo.x (Vit Ondruch)]

nobu (Nobuyoshi Nakada) wrote in #note-1:

Should we remove that note simply?

Yes, that seems to like something which should have been part of that commit.

[vo.x (Vit Ondruch)]

Actually, there is one more occurrence of this situation:

https://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/51e6becd391eac03fd3842e1db9b6907999d64ba/LEGAL?plain=1#L1090-L1093

and there is some history:

https://github.com/ruby/ruby/commit/cb47ae58d339b7e7adbcd11c2d896a3bb61b8e7c

At this stage, it seems that the note was already obsolete, because the 3rd paragraph was already dropped on some places such as:

https://github.com/ruby/ruby/commit/10d3f6a039fb05c309243f8937c36bd3b5a6f724

At different places, the note appeared out of blue it seems:

https://github.com/ruby/ruby/commit/3ad44e0aa18ff335cf110d8da11d92af82e2ad51
https://github.com/ruby/ruby/commit/b9f3cd5a0c53304cf2611864a5ef750bdb7694d6

[vo.x (Vit Ondruch)]

But wait, maybe the "old style" license is crippled and it should really contain the additional paragraph, because otherwise as far as I understand, the difference between old/new style is precisely the one paragraph.