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Comment by TheRealPomax | Hacker News Reader

So... did they talk to the SQLite maintainer to see how much of this can be taken on board? Because it seems weird to omit that if they did, and it seems even weirder if they didn't after benchmarking showed two orders of magnitude improvement.

(Even if that information should only be a line item in the paper, I don't see one... and a post _about_ the paper should definitely have something to link to?)

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They're rewriting SQLite. They're going to put their effort into that surely? Also SQLite explicitly state that they do not accept outside contributions, so there's no point trying.

It is not quite correct to say that the sqlite project does not accept outside contributions at all. The web site says "the project does not accept patches from people who have not submitted an affidavit dedicating their contribution into the public domain."

> The web site says "the project does not accept patches from people who have not submitted an affidavit dedicating their contribution into the public domain."

I have been always curious about this. Is there any more public information to this? When one submits a affidavit, do all their work become public domain? Do you highlight the code and get a affidavit with each contribution?

for e.g. in my country India, I don't think it is not possible to get such Govt approved affidavit.

The author of SQLite commented here about accepting contributions:

“They have a really high bar”, but are accepted, occasionally: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34480732

Affidavits are not normally government issued.

They are a statement of what you say and they are notorized. Making a false affidavit is an offence.

India's copyright regime has the concept of public domain 60 years after the death of the author.

But you can use a CC0 license from Creative Commons to release your rights as much as possible.

Read further:

> In order to keep SQLite completely free and unencumbered by copyright, the project does not accept patches.

Except that is not what SQLite states at all. They accept outside work provided the contributors waive their rights to the code by dedicating it to the public domain, and it's a high quality contribution. Which makes a whole lot of sense when the entire planet uses it. And of course, this is an academic publication so those requirements are basically lowest bar if you're serious. And consulting with your primary source during the research and iteration phase(s) and mentioning that in your publication is kind of expected?

I quote:

> In order to keep SQLite completely free and unencumbered by copyright, the project does not accept patches.

Let's read the rest of that paragraph too:

> [...] the project does not accept patches. If you would like to suggest a change and you include a patch as a proof-of-concept, that would be great. However, please do not be offended if we rewrite your patch from scratch. [1]

As in, they don't blindly accept patches, if you do all the work and send your patch to them and go "I have done all of this without consulting you, please commit it", it'll get deleted because that's not how SQLite does external contributions. Instead, if you have high quality ideas and even some PoC code to go with that, contact SQLite and discuss whether it makes sense to integrate that. And we can even read the official response by SQLite to the continued claims that they don't accept contributions here on HN. [2]

But of course, whether SQLite accepts patches or not was never at issue, what matters is whether or not this research team contacted SQLite at all, because academic collaboration is one of the pillars of academic research. I don't see that in their paper, which should make you go "why was this step skipped?"

[1] https://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34480732

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