Repost of phdaemon - version #3

[Gil Kloepfer Jr.]

In article <431 at icus.UUCP> lenny at icus.UUCP (Lenny Tropiano) writes:
|>In article <112 at pbhacker.UUCP> tlh at pbhacker.UUCP (Lee Hounshell) writes:
|>|>I've had a few requests for a repost of the fixed version of phdaemon..
|>|>for those of you not familiar with it, phdaemon will monitor both
|>|>incoming and outgoing calls on your Unix PC.
|>|>
|>
|>Some phdaemon history...
|>
|>The phdaemon everyone is familiar with was probably the version I wrote.

[Remainder of Lenny's description deleted]

|>Note this was a total rewrite... I did give credit to Paul and Mike in
|>my comment section which was somehow changed (for what reason) by
|>Lee Hounshell.  I would appreciate if the header information was left
|>in tact, and you just added your revision history and your comments where
|>appropriate. [I thought this was somehow understood when people add to
|>someone else's programs]  

Note that this is NOT an attack on other people "hacking" people's posted
programs.

When I saw the source posting that Lenny refers to, I called him and asked
him, "what gives?"  I looked at both programs side by side and could see
that most of the changes to phdaemon that Lee made were in modifying some
coding style (why, I don't know), removing some code he thought did not
make any sense, and adding code which handled the "new" error trapping.

Why Lee changed the header to this program is beyond my comprehension.  There
are two things (specifically) which bother me:

	1.  As Lenny made reference to, the program's revision history
	    had been totally modified to such an extent that nobody
	    in the future could send context diffs to a central site and
	    get the latest version of the program.

	2.  The organization to which Lenny belongs had been omitted from
	    the header.

Why do people post their source code to the net, rather than binaries?  So
that people can learn from other people's work, and so that the author
can learn from the net.community when context diffs are returned and a
new version of the program is released.  This doesn't mean that if Lee
decided to rewrite the whole thing, that he should stick Lenny's name in
boldface type at the top of the program, but as long as the majority of the
program is Lenny's, then the header should have remained in-tact with a
note as to the revision history of the program being modified.

Even more properly, Lee should have followed-up to Lenny in another letter
(supposing the original one got lost in the "mail") with a set of context
diffs so that Lenny could release a new version.

There is no reason why each of use MUST stick a disclaimer and copyright
notice at the bottom of each of our headers stating that the program
can be copied and hacked but the header should remain in the program.

Further, the organization which someone represents should always remain
attached to the person's name since, in many cases, the organization
helped by providing the resources which made the program possible.  Again,
recognition should go to the author and his organization when a majority
of a program is used for a particular purpose.

I would appreciate some input on how future public domain software posted
to the net should be maintained (especially as to "ownership" of code,
what is proper as far as changing headings (,etc), who should handle
maintenance of the code, and so on).  Please send mail to me directly and
I will post a followup article in about 2 weeks summarizing the responses.

+------------------------------------+----------------------------------------+
| Gil Kloepfer, Jr.                  | Net-Address:                           |
| ICUS Software Systems              | {boulder,talcott}!icus!limbic!gil      |
| P.O. Box 1                         | Voice-net: (516) 968-6860              |
| Islip Terrace, New York  11752     | Othernet: gil at limbic.UUCP              |
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