Re: legal status of progmodes/sym-comp.el

[Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com>]

Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> writes:

> It's can of worms time again...
>
> Dave Love's latest version of python.el requires his sym-comp library.
> This is now installed as lisp/progmodes/sym-comp.el.
> It is "Copyright (C) 2004  Dave Love".
>
> As far as I know, he has expressed no interest in contributing this to
> Emacs, so I don't see that we can just take it and make it copyright FSF.
>
> I mean, I have a blanket past and future Emacs copyright assignment,
> but that doesn't mean you can take any elisp code I happen to put on a
> website and make it copyright FSF - only those things I explicitly
> contribute.
>
> (We seem to be interpreting the lawyer's statement:
>
>    http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-05/msg00466.html
>    From:    Richard Stallman
>    Subject:    We can use python.el
>    Date:       Sat, 12 May 2007 12:47:54 -0400
>
>    Our lawyer says we can use python.el, including the more recent changes.
>
> to mean that any changes Dave makes to python.el on his website can be
> incorporated into Emacs for the rest of time, even if he doesn't
> explicitly say so. That seems odd to me as well.)

Thanks for the catch.  I'm forwarding this to Dave Love as well.