From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Improving communication between GNU Emacs and XEmacs Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 13:49:54 -0600 (MDT) Sender: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org Message-ID: <200204121949.g3CJnsJ22647@aztec.santafe.edu> References: <200204111452.g3BEqxb21309@aztec.santafe.edu> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1018641113 1747 127.0.0.1 (12 Apr 2002 19:51:53 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 19:51:53 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org Return-path: Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1 (Debian)) id 16w75N-0000S4-00 for ; Fri, 12 Apr 2002 21:51:53 +0200 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([199.232.76.164]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 16w7Lm-00008r-00 for ; Fri, 12 Apr 2002 22:08:50 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=fencepost.gnu.org) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 16w75B-00005z-00; Fri, 12 Apr 2002 15:51:41 -0400 Original-Received: from pele.santafe.edu ([192.12.12.119]) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 16w73U-0008Pe-00; Fri, 12 Apr 2002 15:49:56 -0400 Original-Received: from aztec.santafe.edu (aztec [192.12.12.49]) by pele.santafe.edu (8.11.6+Sun/8.9.3) with ESMTP id g3CJnsa12550; Fri, 12 Apr 2002 13:49:54 -0600 (MDT) Original-Received: (from rms@localhost) by aztec.santafe.edu (8.10.2+Sun/8.9.3) id g3CJnsJ22647; Fri, 12 Apr 2002 13:49:54 -0600 (MDT) X-Authentication-Warning: aztec.santafe.edu: rms set sender to rms@aztec using -f Original-To: sperber@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de In-Reply-To: (sperber@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de) Errors-To: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.9 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Emacs development discussions. List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:2598 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:2598 This is an unsubstantiated claim, and it doesn't get better with repetition---many XEmacs maintainers have signed papers (including myself), and if you have questions about authorship, you need only ask. You proposed cooperation, so I thought we were having a civil conversation, not an argument where people say "I dare you to prove that!" In the interests of cooperation I will explain the situation in a little more detail--perhaps then you will see the difficulty we are in. Some XEmacs developers have signed papers, and some have not. So we can consider using a piece of code from XEmacs. Sometimes the authors are people who have signed papers (or will do so), and sometimes they are not. But the hardest problem is that in many cases we cannot reliably identify all the authors of a substantial piece of code. I wish it were true that we could simply ask someone, but XEmacs has a history of ten years, during which many different people maintained it, and for much of that time without keeping records. Even if all those people wished to cooperate, with all the good will in the world their memories are not up to it. The task facing them would be to name everyone that wrote more than 15 lines over the past N years. The unaided human memory can't do that task reliably. That is why it is important to keep records, and why we usually can't use code in XEmacs unless its history was particularly short and simple. There are cases, such as your package code, which are easier--where it does seem that we can identify the authors and they have signed papers. For such code, we can cooperate. I wish this were true for all of XEmacs, but I know from various experiences over the last 6 years there are large parts for which it is not. RMS> I don't see sense in helping you design changes to code we can't RMS> use anyway. Well, as a sign of goodwill, many XEmacs developers have written and maintained code which are available for GNU Emacs as well---as vice versa. If we adopted your viewpoint, then you're obviously saying we should stop doing this since this is really code we can't use anyway either. If the XEmacs developers saw a legal difficulty in using code from Emacs, then they would rationally reach such a conclusion. However, as far as I have heard, they regard all the code in Emacs as available for their use.