Re: beamer, pdflatex and auctex

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Dieter Wilhelm <dieter@duenenhof-wilhelm.de> writes:

> David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> Dieter Wilhelm <dieter@duenenhof-wilhelm.de> writes:
>>
>>> Why is this not sufficient for including their work in the
>>> official Emacs installation, why must they even give up their
>>> copyright?  They already stated that their code can be reused by
>>> everyone, couldn't it?
>>
>> They made no legally binding statement whatsoever.
>
> From a legal point of view clearly problematic, with common sense
> it's another story.  When I give something to a "charity" I'm not
> eligible to claim later on "interest".

But if there is no proof that you have given anything, that does not
help.

>> Emacs is too important for the FSF to risk that.
>
> <off_topic>
> I'm curious whether the usage of Emacs and TeX is still growing or has
> reached some saturation / decline in this age of graphical IDEs.
> </off_topic>

My guess is that percentages decrease and absolute numbers increase.

> Furthermore I'm interested whether the guys in the snippet below
> have signed legal papers for the FSF (as is claimed in a certain
> lisp file), I'm using and reworking their code.  Do you know how I
> could get this piece of information in an unbureaucratic way?
>
> ;; This file containes code from ansys-mod.el.
> ;; Copyright (C) 1997 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> ;; Author: Tim Read <Tim.Read@fp.co.nz> (Author does not respond)
> ;; Author: Geoff Foster <fosterg@fp.co.nz> (Address unreachable,
> ;;   Dieter Wilhelm 2006-03-08)

I don't see an assignment from either person in the copyright
assignment file accessible by GNU maintainers.

Where did you get the claim?

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum