🚀 go-pugleaf

It has recently come to my attention that there is a benchmark
program floating around which contains a collection of operations
on arbitrary precision integers.  These operations form the bulk
of the file, and include predicates with names like
	addn/5
	divq/4
	comz/5
and the data structure used to represent numbers is
	[d0,d1,...dk] ~~ d0 + R*(d1 + R*(... + R*dk) ...)
	where R is 10000 on 32-bit machines or 100000 on DEC-10s
	to represent non-negative integers

	separate sign (+ or -) and [d0,...,dk]
	to represent signed integers

	number(Sign,Numerator,Denominator)
	where gcd(Numerator,Denominator) = 1 or 0
	to represent rationals.

This collection of operations comes from either
	- the freely available DEC-10 Prolog file EVAL.PL, or
	- the Quintus Prolog file library(long).
But the "Author:" comment has been removed.

The DEC-10 Prolog version of the rational arithmetic package is
freely available, and I have no objection to anyone using and
distributing it.  However, I am very upset that my name has been
taken off it.  Taking the author's name off a program that you
got for nothing is a mean and contemptible thing to do, unless
of course you have the author's permission.  (If you make a
small extract from the program for instructional purposes, that's
another matter.  If someone had a file containing one or two of
the operations, I wouldn't expect them to retain my name on that.)

I am not going to name names, because I believe that the people who
distributed the copy I saw are at least two steps away from the culprit.
So if you have a copy of this program, don't think that I am accusing
the person you got it from.

In general:
  - the DEC-10 Prolog files which I sent to {SU-SCORE} may freely be
    used and distributed, even in commercial systems.
  - there is no *legal* requirement on anyone to do anything
    in particular.
  - but it is good manners to leave the name of the original author
    in the source code, and if the code is used in a commercial
    product, it is good manners to credit the original author in
    the documentation of the product.

I was really hurt and outraged by this.