Re: beamer, pdflatex and auctex

[Dieter Wilhelm <dieter@duenenhof-wilhelm.de>]

David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:

>>>
>>> More probably stone old.
>>
>> You know it the best the Latest version is 11.83, 11.14 seems to be
>> from 2004.
>
> 11.14 was released in 2002.  Its _successor_ release 11.50 is from
> 2004.

Thanks, I just had a lazy look at file creation/change dates at some
ftp directory.  But this was sufficient for convincing me that this
version is too old anyway.

>> An innocent question: Is AUCTeX too big to be included into the
>> standard Emacs installation?
>
> It would require about two dozen past contributors to be found and
> persuaded to assign their copyright to the FSF.  All current
> contributors and the past maintainers have already done this (we
> reached that state about a month ago), but it will likely take quite a
> bit of time and luck to finish this process.

Another really innocent question: I assume that all former
contributors have put their code already under the GPL.  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?

Understand me right, I'm not against assigning code to the FSF, quite
the opposite but what puzzles me is why the usage of GPL code could be
somehow degrading or harmful for the FSF and Emacs in particular.

-- 
    Best wishes

    H. Dieter Wilhelm
    Darmstadt, Germany