[erlang-questions] A PropEr announcement

Edmond Begumisa ebegumisa@REDACTED
Fri Jun 17 16:29:52 CEST 2011 

I love PropEr!

One of it's early adopters (I think).

- Edmond -

On Sat, 18 Jun 2011 00:07:52 +1000, Eric Merritt <ericbmerritt@REDACTED>  
wrote:

> Guys,
>
>  None of us are lawyers (I think ;) so lets leave the legalities to
> the lawyers. If you are really worried about things buy a QuickCheck
> license otherwise Kostis has produced a good open project that finally
> makes property based testing (an extreme improvement over simple unit
> testing) accessible to the average joe, from a price perspective yes,
> but even more importantly from an openness perspective. Kostis is
> working on the license issue and I suspect will come out with
> something pretty acceptable.
>
> Eric
>
> On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 8:23 AM, Edmond Begumisa
> <ebegumisa@REDACTED> wrote:
>> On Fri, 17 Jun 2011 20:43:51 +1000, James Churchman
>> <jameschurchman@REDACTED> wrote:
>>
>>> making something with a similar-ish api to something else is not  
>>> reverse
>>> engineering. its a rewrite from scratch.
>>
>> I didn't say that it was, and neither did Ulf.
>>
>> Ulf just raised a hypothetical chain of events which may be interpreted  
>> by
>> _some_ people reading _some_ statutes as reverse engineering.
>>
>> In said hypothetical legal dispute -- what *you* and *I* think is  
>> reverse
>> engineering doesn't matter. What matters would be the aggrieved parties
>> argument for interpretation of the statute, and any precedents  
>> supporting
>> such an interpretation, but most importantly, their evidence for the  
>> facts
>> and chain of events that lead up to the dispute, and ultimately how well
>> both sides can convince the court in session. In such a dispute, the
>> defendant/respondent may well present the the points you raise as part  
>> of
>> their side of the case.
>>
>> My point was in regards to whom would be liable to whom in such a  
>> dispute.
>>
>> - Edmond -
>>
>>> reverse engineering would be disassembling the beam files to discover  
>>> how
>>> they work, simply reimplementing them it is not. if that was the case  
>>> there
>>> would be one cd player, one car, one bike, one washing machine, one  
>>> fridge,
>>> one operating system etc.. in the world and never ever a second  
>>> version, and
>>> having a copy of the original will make no difference, if you clean  
>>> room
>>> something, as long as you don't break any patents in the process.
>>>
>>> On 17 Jun 2011, at 04:30, Edmond Begumisa wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Fri, 17 Jun 2011 12:56:59 +1000, Edmond Begumisa
>>>> <ebegumisa@REDACTED> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Just to clarify/reinforce, what gets a little confusing in these
>>>>> discussions are the rights and obligations between licensor and  
>>>>> licensee,
>>>>> which is a contractual arrangement and subject to the doctrine of  
>>>>> privity.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> CORRECTION: This was inaccurate. A licensee agreement is not strictly
>>>> contractual agreement, but a license may be passed as consideration
>>>> exchanged as part of a contractual agreement. Nevertheless, the privy
>>>> doctrine usually applies to agreements in which licenses are past in  
>>>> most
>>>> jurisdictions.
>>>>
>>>>> [Continuing with the mentioned hypothetical]
>>>>>
>>>>> * If the PropEr developers have copies of QuickCheck Mini, then they
>>>>> bind themselves to a license agreement with Quviq, including the  
>>>>> promise not
>>>>> to reverse engineer.
>>>>> * If PropEr is GPL'ed, and Vlad uses it, he binds himself to an
>>>>> agreement with the PropEr developers, and the terms thereunder.
>>>>>
>>>>> Vlad is not privy to the first agreement, and thus can never be held
>>>>> liable for its breach, if there is such a breach. And he cannot be  
>>>>> expected
>>>>> to stop using a version he already has. (Though he might have the  
>>>>> rug pulled
>>>>> out from under him, should PropEr development cease and future  
>>>>> versions stop
>>>>> being made.)
>>>>>
>>>>> However, assuming all parties are in Europe, and although the  
>>>>> concept of
>>>>> freedom of contract generally applies, they also bind themselves  
>>>>> doctrine
>>>>> that they can never make an agreement that contravenes codified EU  
>>>>> law -
>>>>> including said reverse-engineering law in said copyright statute.  
>>>>> Then the
>>>>> aggrieved party need not be privy to an agreement to have their  
>>>>> rights
>>>>> enforced since these rights are not established by an agreement, but  
>>>>> by a
>>>>> statute. In this case, Vlad and all PropEr users in Europe could  
>>>>> well be
>>>>> ordered by a court to cease using the program regardless of any  
>>>>> agreement
>>>>> they have with it's developers (since such an agreement would be  
>>>>> considered
>>>>> invalidated.) Hypothetically speaking.
>>>>>
>>>>> That said: Erlang being a small-friendly community -- I assumed (and
>>>>> like to continue to a assume) that PropEr and QuickCheck developers  
>>>>> have not
>>>>> only been aware of each others projects, but I also like to think  
>>>>> that
>>>>> they've been in touch with each other and sorted out any such  
>>>>> concerns
>>>>> before version 1 of PropEr was announced. Like Erlang, I prefer to  
>>>>> think of
>>>>> the happy case!
>>>>>
>>>>> - Edmond -
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, 16 Jun 2011 18:23:04 +1000, Ulf Wiger
>>>>> <ulf.wiger@REDACTED> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 16 Jun 2011, at 10:01, Vlad Dumitrescu wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 08:43, Ulf Wiger
>>>>>>> <ulf.wiger@REDACTED> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 16 Jun 2011, at 08:30, Vlad Dumitrescu wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> This kind of issues are worse than flame wars! :-)
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I have yet another point of view that increases the confusion:  
>>>>>>>> PropEr
>>>>>>>> is mostly compatible with Triq and QuickCheck (there's a free  
>>>>>>>> older
>>>>>>>> version).
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Well, there is a version available in jungerl, but to my  
>>>>>>> knowledge, it
>>>>>>> was not put there by the authors, and not actually intended to be  
>>>>>>> free. Even
>>>>>>> so, one might consider it a lot less sensitive to copy that  
>>>>>>> version than the
>>>>>>> later, proprietary, versions of QuickCheck.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Quviq released an official mini-version last year.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> http://www.quviq.com/news100621.html
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Yes, but the QuickCheck Mini license agreement, while permitting  
>>>>>> free
>>>>>> use and re-distribution, specifically forbids reverse-engineering.  
>>>>>> Thus, we
>>>>>> should hope that the PropEr developers did not obtain a copy of  
>>>>>> QuickCheck
>>>>>> Mini and ran it in order to learn how it worked, as this would put  
>>>>>> them in
>>>>>> violation of the EU Directives regarding software copyright.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> For those who are inspired by PropEr, but are put off by the GPL,  
>>>>>> using
>>>>>> and re-distributing QuickCheck Mini is of course unproblematic. ;-)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> BR,
>>>>>> Ulf W
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Ulf Wiger, CTO, Erlang Solutions, Ltd.
>>>>>> http://erlang-solutions.com
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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