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Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

IIRC, clisp worked just fine without GNU readline. https://www.gnu.org/software/clisp/impnotes/readline-mod.htm...

If Lispworks writes a compatibility layer that allows SLIME to work with Lispworks, they are not causing Lispworks to infringe on the Emacs software license.

(Side note: for your hypothetical website critiquing another copyrighted work, there is a somewhat unclear [in the sense that it's facts and circumstances dependent] fair use doctrine in the US that almost surely allows genuine critique of that work to include relevant snippets [while disallowing copying the work in its entirety under guise of critiquing it]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#U.S._fair_use_factors )

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It doesn't really matter if the code as a whole worked without readline. What matters is if the code that linked to readline worked. It's that tiny bit of code that may or may not be a derived work. If it is, then you can't distribute it. No matter how tiny it is, if you can't distribute it, then you can't distribute it.

Keep in mind that agreeing to license your work under the GPL is an offer for remedying infringement. You don't have to accept. If you don't accept, then you have to deal with the consequences just like any other infringement case.

For the side not: It is true :-) However, just to be a bit playful, I should point out that fair use is not a defense in US copyright law. If your use is fair use it is still infringing. Fair use kicks in when determining damages. So your infringing use will suffer no damages because it is fair use. However, you should always be careful when relying on fair use because it is not a defense -- your infringement case can go to court and you still have to pay your lawyers!

From what I've read/studied (though I am not a lawyer), fair use is an affirmative defense against copyright infringement in the US.

I'll have to think more about the readline interface bit you raise. My gut instinct suggests that's not quite right, but my rational brain isn't able to label/ID/argue why, so your point has some merit. I'll need to think about it some (so thanks for that [seriously]!)

Maybe there's another line input library with a compatible binary interface and MIT licensed and clisp is written to interface to that library. That would seem like it might fly.

libedit was written for just this purpose

https://github.com/NetBSD/src/tree/trunk/lib/libedit (cvsweb appears down)

https://www.thrysoee.dk/editline/

Interestingly enough, neither of these libraries are as objectively as good as readline. For example, they do not implement a true kill ring. They aren't macro programmable. I find it almost amusing that the authors were too lazy to actually reimplement all of the extremely well documented behavior in libreadline and libhistory.

If the purpose is "plausible deniability" to allow GNU readline to be linked by users, that seems perfectly reasonable. Why work harder than needed?

or 80/20.

really I just want to be able to find my previous command, and multi word-level edit it.

Also not a lawyer, but if you happen to run across a reference to fair use being an affirmative defense, I would definitely be interested in seeing it.

Edit: I always thought that was why "fair dealing" was considered better, but it's definitely possible I've got it wrong.

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