Re: Permission to use portions of the recent GNU Emacs Manual

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>]

>>>>> "Ben" == Ben Wing <ben@666.com> writes:

    Ben> David Kastrup wrote:

    >> Which is the FSF's choice.  The difference is that XEmacs has
    >> decided not to bother about assignments and stuff, and due to
    >> that decision they don't have such a general cooperation to
    >> offer in a manner useful for Emacs.

That's sad but true, although I would phrase it differently.

    Ben> You seem to think that it is the duty of XEmacs to do
    Ben> whatever is necessary to assure that GNU Emacs can use its

Not the duty; merely a precondition for any effort on the part of the
FSF.

    Ben> code, even to the extent of hindering the development of
    Ben> XEmacs itself.  In fact, if we had insisted on such a policy,
    Ben> we could not have gotten the sorts of corporate assistance
    Ben> (Sun, Amdahl, INS Engineering and others) that we got.

Which, you should recall, the FSF has deliberately foregone, to the
extent that accepting such assistance conflicts with the overriding
goal of promoting software freedom---which you should not confuse with
promoting free software.

OK, Ben, you tried, you didn't get what you wanted, but when we decide
we'd like to synch some parts of the manual, we can apply for the
specific relicensing then, as Richard suggested.



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