sasaki@harvard.ARPA (Marty Sasaki) (06/25/85)
Will the parties involved get together and actually come up with
something all nice and legal about the status of GNU EMACS?
If I am going to have to pay a substantial fee to run it on my VMS
systems then I have to carefully reconsider the effort that I am now
putting into porting GNU EMACS to VMS.
How much of the code is from Gosling's version? How difficult would it
be to rewrite this?
--
----------------
Marty Sasaki net: sasaki@harvard.{arpa,uucp}
Havard University Science Center phone: 617-495-1270
One Oxford Street
Cambridge, MA 02138chris@umcp-cs.UUCP (Chris Torek) (06/25/85)
Just to confuse the issue even further, the display code in Gnumacs seems to have a lot of the work I did to the Gosling display code (I am the ``ACT''), and my changes definitely *were* public domain. (This should not be considered a comment on the legality of distributing Gnumacs.) -- In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 4251) UUCP: seismo!umcp-cs!chris CSNet: chris@umcp-cs ARPA: chris@maryland
mis@dagobah.UUCP (Mark Seiden, Lucasfilm System Group, 415-485-5011) (06/28/85)
Given Gosling's unequivocal statement about not giving anyone permission to
do other than USE his emacs (which i also know to have been the case for
years and years)... I have a sneaking suspicion that Stallman might just be
making some kind of political statement here about the way he believes
software should be. I cannot comprehend his questionable claim that any
permission to copy allegedly given by Gosling to a third party is assumable
by him.
I happen to be in the slightly privileged position of being ALLOWED to USE
(not redistribute) the code in GNUEmacs that rms is distributing (and
possibly infringing the copyright of).
Nonetheless, my fingers will do the walking away from GNU to jove, (for
those small emacs-things not needing lisp-macros) and stick with Unipress
Emacs for those situations where i want someone else to provide some
guarantee of support.
Zimmerman's statement about the legal implications for us guys who once
intended to use GNUemacs I believe are correct: We, and our institutions
could be infringing Gosling's copyright, and if we copy GNUEmacs, or
redistribute it further, we certainly are. Stallman has chosen to put us in
that position and no thanks to him for that. What Gosling or Unipress are
going to do about it remains to be seen:
- Stallman says they aren't going to do anything. I don't believe his
claims or legal basis are correct, and find his statments on the matter
selfserving and arrogant. And he's STILL pushing the point, and accused
zimmerman of "browbeating" for raising the issue. (I'd like to hear what
the MIT lawyers think about THIS one.)
- Unipress has so far made no public statement. Since what they sell is as
much service and support as "just code", perhaps there is no actual conflict
for them. I know they're unhappy with the sitution, because now, either
they're forced to act like bogey-men (they aren't), or feel "ripped off"
because they're nice guys. If I were in their position i'd get an
injunction preventing distribution of GNUEmacs. (What would YOU do if you
were Gosling or Unipress and felt abused?)
There IS a question of honor here, and now that i've been put on notice that
Gosling didn't give Stallman permission to copy his code, I'm not going to
use it and I hope you all will do the same. ("shunning"). Not that i don't
appreciate his efforts, but i don't trust his motives, now that i've seen
an example of how he implements them.
Is gnu a software project, or a soapbox?
m.