From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Uday S Reddy Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: The copyright issue (Was: Key bindings proposal) Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2010 10:12:11 +0100 Message-ID: <19546.32875.515000.117266@gargle.gargle.HOWL> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1281024967 26708 80.91.229.12 (5 Aug 2010 16:16:07 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2010 16:16:07 +0000 (UTC) Cc: "Stephen J. Turnbull" To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Aug 05 18:16:05 2010 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Oh35f-0001l7-Kl for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 05 Aug 2010 18:15:57 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:58792 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Oh35W-0001f1-DM for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 05 Aug 2010 12:14:34 -0400 Original-Received: from [140.186.70.92] (port=34383 helo=eggs.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Oh2uf-00053v-PE for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 05 Aug 2010 12:03:24 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Oh2ue-00048I-DS for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 05 Aug 2010 12:03:21 -0400 Original-Received: from sun61.bham.ac.uk ([147.188.128.150]:58813) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Oh2ue-000473-9F for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 05 Aug 2010 12:03:20 -0400 Original-Received: from [147.188.128.127] (helo=bham.ac.uk) by sun61.bham.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1OgwV7-0003xR-N3; Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:12:33 +0100 Original-Received: from mx1.cs.bham.ac.uk ([147.188.192.53]) by bham.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1OgwV7-0006h4-DB; Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:12:33 +0100 Original-Received: from gromit.cs.bham.ac.uk ([147.188.193.16] helo=MARUTI.cs.bham.ac.uk) by mx1.cs.bham.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.51) id 1OgwV6-0005XG-Vi; Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:12:33 +0100 X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Solaris 10 (beta) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:128292 Archived-At: Stephen J. Turnbull writes: > BTW, you forgot David Reitter, who must fork because Aquamacs is > dedicated to implementing features that make his proprietary platform > (the Mac) more attractive for users than free platforms -- and such > features are not allowed as a matter of Emacs policy. I suppose this is a legal issue, and can't just be settled by newsgroup debates. But it seems that the FSF copyright policy has become a bugbear, which might not have been the original intention. The current situation is highly asymmetric. Anybody, including a private corporation, can use the FSF codebase to develop their variants, but Gnu Emacs can't use their enhancements to enrich itself. So, Gnu ends up lagging behind and, perhaps in cases like Aquamacs, not even being able to enter the territory. It leads to more and more forking, making life hard for the package developers and becoming a disservice to the users. Can't we find a way out of this dilemma? Cheers, Uday