Jean Louis wrote:
-@c Put in by rms. Don't remove. -@cartouche -@strong{Future Change Warning:} Proposed Federal censorship regulations -may prohibit us from giving you information about the possibility of -calling this function. We would be required to say that this is not an -acceptable way of terminating a program. -@end cartoucheThere was some "Federal censorship regulation" that would prohibit the free speech, and the pun is within the programs function is abort() on Federal censorship regulation.
That was a controversy far enough back to be known to me more as recent history than as direct experience, but I understand that we have made significant progress since then towards program source code being recognized as protected free speech under the US Constitution and that much of our cryptographic source code is now distributed on that basis. Since GNU is based in USA, is this particular protest obsolete, as any such censorship applied to us would be clearly unconstitutional, or are there still possible risks here?
In short, is this protest still accurate or can we now confidently say that that change will never happen? Do we still keep it anyway just to highlight the absurdity?
[CC'ing RMS here in case this has fallen through the cracks and we really have already won on this issue -- I do not know but I expect that he does]
-- Jacob
