From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: David Kastrup Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.xemacs.beta,gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Permission to use portions of the recent GNU Emacs Manual Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 13:47:58 +0100 Message-ID: References: <014501c4e4eb$3af838d0$0300a8c0@neeeeeee2> NNTP-Posting-Host: deer.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1103547174 30769 80.91.229.6 (20 Dec 2004 12:52:54 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 12:52:54 +0000 (UTC) Cc: xemacs-beta@xemacs.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org, bob@rattlesnake.com, stephen@xemacs.org, andy@xemacs.org Original-X-From: xemacs-beta-bounces@xemacs.org Mon Dec 20 13:52:44 2004 Return-path: Original-Received: from gwyn.tux.org ([199.184.165.135] ident=ident-user) by deer.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1CgN1o-0004Wn-00 for ; Mon, 20 Dec 2004 13:52:44 +0100 Original-Received: from gwyn.tux.org (ident-user@localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by gwyn.tux.org (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id iBKCm7mB026363; Mon, 20 Dec 2004 07:48:08 -0500 Original-Received: from gwyn.tux.org (ident-user@localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by gwyn.tux.org (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id iBKCm4fe026355 for ; Mon, 20 Dec 2004 07:48:04 -0500 Original-Received: (from xemacweb@localhost) by gwyn.tux.org (8.12.11/8.12.11/Submit) id iBKCm4CG026354 for xemacs-beta-mailman@xemacs.org; Mon, 20 Dec 2004 07:48:04 -0500 Original-Received: from gwyn.tux.org (ident-user@localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by gwyn.tux.org (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id iBKCm3i8026343 for ; Mon, 20 Dec 2004 07:48:03 -0500 Original-Received: (from mailnull@localhost) by gwyn.tux.org (8.12.11/8.12.11/Submit) id iBKCm3fO026342 for xemacweb@tux.org; Mon, 20 Dec 2004 07:48:03 -0500 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org (fencepost.gnu.org [199.232.76.164]) by gwyn.tux.org (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id iBKCm2s9026337; Mon, 20 Dec 2004 07:48:02 -0500 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lola.goethe.zz) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.34) id 1CgMsS-0005Yu-ED; Mon, 20 Dec 2004 07:43:04 -0500 Original-To: rms@gnu.org In-Reply-To: (Richard Stallman's message of "Mon, 20 Dec 2004 05:56:32 -0500") User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/21.3.50 (gnu/linux) X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV 0.80/622/Wed Dec 8 08:36:53 2004 clamav-milter version 0.80j on gwyn.tux.org X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV 0.80/622/Wed Dec 8 08:36:53 2004 clamav-milter version 0.80j on gwyn.tux.org X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV 0.80/622/Wed Dec 8 08:36:53 2004 clamav-milter version 0.80j on gwyn.tux.org X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV 0.80/622/Wed Dec 8 08:36:53 2004 clamav-milter version 0.80j on gwyn.tux.org X-Virus-Status: Clean X-Virus-Status: Clean X-Virus-Status: Clean X-Virus-Status: Clean X-XEmacs-List: beta X-BeenThere: xemacs-beta@xemacs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: XEmacs Beta Testers List-Unsubscribe: , List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: xemacs-beta-bounces@xemacs.org Errors-To: xemacs-beta-bounces@xemacs.org Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.xemacs.beta:17528 gmane.emacs.devel:31291 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:31291 Richard Stallman writes: > Richard, please reconsider. You have a reputation of antipathy > towards XEmacs. If you're at all interested in mending fences a > little, this would be a very easy step -- simply declare that we > are allowed to use the code under our license (which was your > license up through 2000 or so). Otherwise you give the > impression of actively hindering the XEmacs project. > > I did not choose this license with a view to its effects on you; it > is the general FSF policy for manuals. Definitely. > However, the fact that it is inconvenient for XEmacs does not strike > me as a disadvantage. It strikes me as a disadvantage, though not because of XEmacs in particular, but because it will be a disadvantage for _any_ derived project, and the whole point of a public licence like the GPL is not to put the copyright holder into a special position with regard to software development. > After all, you have been uncooperative towards us for 10 years, and > you don't see that as a disadvantage. You are speaking here for Ben Wing, presumably. But Ben Wing is not the only developer of XEmacs. I know pretty well, for example, that Stephen Turnbull, the current maintainer, considers the inability to broadly contribute back code with the stringency required by the Emacs project a disadvantage and has invested substantial amounts of work to remedy this in the past. But he as well as others are stuck with a history they can't change at their will. And that history is one of taking the "GPL" at its letter and spirit, developing in the manner that the "Public" in "General Public Licence" is suggesting, a manner that we as Emacs developers are not free to enjoy because our laws make it important that there remain substantial pieces of software which may be defended in court by a substantial copyright holder without conflict of interests from other contributors. > We don't owe you anything, not even small favors. Correct. We don't owe them anything. But the freedoms they enjoy are the freedoms we are fighting for in the first place. And where we find that our fight does not lead to the desired freedoms for the recipients of our software, we need to double-check. To meet our own goals, not those of the others. > Despite my well-known and justified antipathy towards XEmacs, I > offered to consider changing licenses on parts. However, the > response was an ungreatful threat, so I now withdraw that offer. If > I did even the slightest thing for XEmacs now, I might give the > impression of being a pushover. Let me put on the record here that I'd not consider you to be a pushover just because you are willing to judge requests for relicensing on their merit piece by piece, as you agreed to before, without letting yourself be swayed by some cheap rhetoric of Ben Wing. Even if Ben Wing was the only beneficiary of that process, we have the unfortunate situation that a free project with a free community is encountering problems with our choice of free licences in the intended manner. We need to look into this. Maybe after considering their case in detail we'll find that the situation is such that a licence change to GFDL is something that their processes should have made possible in the first place, and that there is nothing to be done on our side. But it would be a mistake not to look into this possible problem merely because the superficial beneficiary is XEmacs, and there are some XEmacs developers some of us don't like. It still is a case of downstream maintenance of free software, and if we don't care about the effects downstream from a copyright assigned pool, we might as well forget about public licensing altogether. In the long run, we should strive for a solution that does not necessitate any exceptions. But in the mean time, we should try to hold up the spirit of our free licences, if necessary, manually and learn about the problems with their application downstream. > I ask all Emacs developers not to respond any further to whatever > they may say here about this. I'd offer to go here as a go-between if necessary where individual more detailed requests are concerned. I agree with you that there does not seem to be a persuasive case for blanket permissions and agreements currently, and so I'll be happy to take this discussion into private. -- David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum