Skill mode for emacs

There is a lot of talk of Skill mode for emacs (and I even had it
once) but I can no longer find it anywhere. Does anyone know of
somewhere I can get hold of it?

Thanks,

Phil.

 

Phil,

I'll email it to you.

Andrew.

 

Thanks Andrew - that's great!

 

Is this available for download somewhere? If not, could you send a
copy my way as well?

Thanks,
Aravind

 

Could anybody who has the skill-mode.el check the license or the EULA
of the code? It must be possible to find out if this thing can be put
on a web page somewhere.

 

Unfortunately there's nothing in any of the files to indicate any kind of
license. As a result, I've been wary about posting it somewhere, but I have
given it to anyone who has asked.

Andrew.

 

Hi Andrew,

but there must be a copyright holder of that code? You know who that
is? Maybe a little email could clear some things? I could volunteer to
ask.

 

Thanks Andrew, got the package. The code seems to have originated from
Ericsson -- skill-defaults.el has the following:

(defvar skill-mode-maintainer-address ""
"Email address to the skill-mode maintainer.")

(defvar skill-mode-maintainer-name
"Jonas Jarnestrom, Stockholm Sweden."
"Name and organization of skill-mode maintainer.")

The code also lists as another email address
for the same person. Further, the file ANNOUNCEMENT lists an ftp
server euagate.eua.ericsson.se, but that's apparently not a publicly
visible machine (or may be non-existent, seeing as the code dates from
1996). I was thinking I could mail those two addresses to see what the
licensing policy is, as well as to see if we could get the source .el
files (provided, of course, that the addresses are still valid). If
Andrew would rather do that as a Cadence representative, I'm happy to
wait -- let me know!

Regards,
-Aravind

 

Argh, looks like the typical utility that got written during work to
make work easier, and in the end nobody knows what to do with the
code. There's definitively copyright on it and in this case, an
employer is involved. Probably not easy to get GPL on that one, I
think. I don't know what Cadence could/would do to help out in this
case.

Has anybody needed to do any mods on the code to make it "work
better"? Maybe I should just send Andrew an email to get the code ...

 

Turns out I hadn't noticed the rather clearly labeled SKILL-MODE-
MANUAL.ps -- the author indicates that the work was done on an unpaid
basis on his own time, and actually provides info for accepting
donations. This would seem to indicate that Ericsson would probably
not be involved.

On the other hand, I'm having problems with the font-lock I guess
I'll temporarily just use lisp-mode or emacs-lisp-mode to get some
basic font lock and indentation, and come back to this when I have
more time. Having the full source would also help. Will mail the
author and see what the response is.

-Aravind

 

As far as I know, the author has not been at Ericsson for some time, and
no longer uses Cadence tools. So good luck in contacting him.

This is most of the problem... nobody has the source, and (from my
understanding) some tentative discussions about Cadence adopting it fell apart
over 10 years ago.

Regards,

Andrew.

 

Did ever copyright laws consider socalled "abandonware?" I guess it
wouldn't help in this case as the source is missing.

I just want to throw in a question here: How about a skill mode (or
plug-in) for eclipse? Anybody thought of that?