Gnus (newsreader) licensing

Gnus (newsreader) licensing

[Ayappan P2]

Hi ,

We are porting Emacs to IBM AIX operating system. As of part of getting
legal approval for any opensource software, we do code scan.

While doing the code scan of Emacs, we encountered the following patent
statements regarding slave Gnusae.

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/gnus/Slave-Gnusae.html

Does this mean we should not be using this feature freely ?

Thanks
Ayappan P

RE: Gnus (newsreader) licensing

[Ludwig, Mark]

> From: Ayappan P2, Friday, November 10, 2017 8:27 AM
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Gnus (newsreader) licensing
> 
> 
> Hi ,
> 
> We are porting Emacs to IBM AIX operating system. As of part of getting
> legal approval for any opensource software, we do code scan.
> 
> While doing the code scan of Emacs, we encountered the following patent
> statements regarding slave Gnusae.
> 
> https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/gnus/Slave-
> Gnusae.html
> 
> Does this mean we should not be using this feature freely ?

It looks like a joke, to me, but you should probably ask your lawyers.

> 
> Thanks
> Ayappan P

Re: Gnus (newsreader) licensing

[Emanuel Berg]

Ludwig, Mark wrote:

> It looks like a joke, to me, but you should
> probably ask your lawyers.

100% joke. But it was never any fun
until today.

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: Gnus (newsreader) licensing

[Phillip Lord]

"Ayappan P2" <ayappap2@in.ibm.com> writes:
> We are porting Emacs to IBM AIX operating system. As of part of getting
> legal approval for any opensource software, we do code scan.
>
> While doing the code scan of Emacs, we encountered the following patent
> statements regarding slave Gnusae.
>
> https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/gnus/Slave-Gnusae.html
>
> Does this mean we should not be using this feature freely ?


It's undoubtedly a joke, as well as being legal nonsense. You can't
"take out copyright" -- it's automatic. And you can't copyright two
words. It might have been possible to patent "master/slave" but if you
were doing so, you wouldn't explain it in a free manual. But in this
case, there is a lot of prior art.

Phil

Re: Gnus (newsreader) licensing

[Emanuel Berg]

Phillip Lord wrote:

>> We are porting Emacs to IBM AIX operating
>> system. As of part of getting legal approval
>> for any opensource software, we do code
>> scan. While doing the code scan of Emacs, we
>> encountered the following patent statements
>> regarding slave Gnusae.
>> https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/gnus/Slave-Gnusae.html
>> Does this mean we should not be using this
>> feature freely ?
>
> It's undoubtedly a joke, as well as being
> legal nonsense.

Gnus is a part of Emacs - perhaps the very best
part - so it is GPLv3 for Gnus as well as for
GNU Emacs.

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573