From: Bill Kelly <billk@...>
Date: 2004-07-20T02:52:52+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby Specification

Hi,

From: "David Ross" <drossruby@yahoo.com>
>
> Request. Can someone create a ruby specification? I
> want to try to create a true rubycc compiler that is
> licensed BSD.

Please don't take this as a criticism.  I am asking 
because I thought Ruby's license was said to allow
commerical exploitation (even closed source).  And
so I'm curious if this is your impression too, or what
additional safeguards or clauses make the BSD license
preferable for your purposes?

> I cannot find the Ruby Specification
> book anywhere, and I refuse to read the ruby sources
> for legal reasons.

I find this perplexing.  I thought open source
wasn't doing a good job of being open source if you
had to be wary of reading it for legal reasons?

An example in my field of interest is id Software's
generous release of their older game engines, such as
DOOM, Quake, and Quake 2 under the GPL.  I was a game
developer when the Quake source was released, and it
never would have occurred to me to be afraid to look
at it.

Anyway, again, this is not intended as a criticism -
I'm just trying to understand what could possibly be
wrong with looking at Ruby's source code.


Regards,

Bill