Re: VMS support

[Thien-Thi Nguyen <ttn@gnuvola.org>]

() Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com>
() Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:52:38 -0400

   What is the situation with the VMS support?  AFAICT, ttn was working
   on getting it to work again, but I haven't heard anything about this
   project since.

Emacs 21.2 was the last known-good port, but that requires out-of-tree
code due to legal issues (specifically: the author of a big chunk of
VMS-specific code filed in 1992 a "copyright disclaimer" only, which is
not equal in force to a "copyright assignment" IIUC, and repeated
attempts to get the (standard) past/future copyright assignment from him
(by me and perhaps others) have failed, even though he has indicated in
200[45]-ish email that he is willing to do so).  These legal issues
might still be resolvable (i can try engaging him again), but i cannot
say for sure.

More details, including (lack-of-)progress/technical info, are at:
http://www.gnuvola.org/software/emacs-for-vms/

   Dan Nicolaescu has suggested removing VMS support for the purpose of
   code cleanup.  WDYT?

I think removing VMS support is fine, but not for the purpose of code
cleanup.  That reason implies that clean VMS support should be kept.
A better reason is that VMS is proprietary and Emacs users on VMS have
not shown sufficient interest in it.

If VMS support is to be removed, please do a complete job and remove it
from the Lisp and config/build/doc/admin parts of Emacs, as well.

thi