Socket-ish streambufs and the old "Socket++" library

From: Phil Edwards (pedwards_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-09-07 16:20:27

I'm interested in coding up some streambufs to work with POSIX-style
network sockets.  Dietmar has kindly volunteered to answer my pestering
questions when I get that far.  :-)

But first, a legal/ethical question:

Many of you have probably seen or used the Socket++ library that was actively
maintained from 1994 to 1997 by Gnanasekaran Swaminathan.  The latest version
(1.11) uses the classic pre-standard IOStreams and does not compile easily,
if it all, with recent compilers.  There's a fair amount of work already
done here that it would be silly to waste.

The copyright statement from the Socket++ documentation reads:

  Copyright (C) 1992-1996 Gnanasekaran Swaminathan <gs4t_at_[hidden]>

  Permission is granted to use at your own risk and distribute this software
  in source and  binary forms provided  the above copyright notice and  this
  paragraph are  preserved on all copies.  This software is provided "as is"
  with no express or implied warranty.

There's no [L]GPL or anything, but there is a copyright statement.  I am
not an expert on copyright law, but I don't think that I can just take
over maintainence of the library, or incorporate it in a newer library.
His email address no longer exists, and I am having trouble trying to
find him to ask his permission/intentions.

Thoughts?

Phil

-- 
pedwards at disaster dot jaj dot com  |  pme at sources dot redhat dot com
devphil at several other less interesting addresses in various dot domains
The gods do not protect fools.  Fools are protected by more capable fools.