On Thu, Sep 30, 1999 at 12:54:32AM +0000, David Coe was heard to say: [quoting RMS] > But in another sense it is not GNU software, because we can't use > XEmacs in the GNU system: using it would mean paying a price in > terms of our ability to enforce the GPL. Some of the people who have > worked on XEmacs have not provided, and have not asked other > contributors to provide, the legal papers to help us enforce the > GPL. I have managed to get legal papers for some parts myself, but > most of the XEmacs developers have not helped me get them. > > ... > > But this is worse than competition--it is unfair competition. The > XEmacs developers can and do copy code they like from Emacs. If I > could copy the code I like from XEmacs in the same way, at least the > rivalry would be fair. But I can't do that't, because substantial > parts of XEmacs don't have legal papers, or don't have known > authors. > > ... > > Is that still an accurate description of the legal status (from > FSF's perspective) of XEmacs, and if so, shouldn't we move it to > non-free?
It looks to me like he's not concerned with the free-ness of the XEmacs code, but rather with the fact that it hasn't had its copyright assigned to the FSF. He doesn't want to include non-FSF-copyrighted code in the main Emacs branch, as I understand. I guess that would keep the FSF from defending the copyright it in court. (?) Anyway, he seems to think so. :-/ Daniel -- "I've struggled with reality for thirty-five years, but I'm glad to say that I finally won." -- _Harvey_