Licensing of NEWS files?

Licensing of NEWS files?

[David Kastrup]

Our various NEWS files, according to the license statement at the end,
are distributed under the GPL.  That seems sort of overkill.  At least
the older files are arguably not an integral part of the version of
Emacs they are distributed with, and it seems like we are doing nobody
including ourselves a favor by keeping people from quoting from the NEWS
file in some article they are doing about a new release.

What actually annoyed me is that the various NEWS files are all also
marked (c) 2015 in spite of not being really a part of the current
Emacs.  Granted, that did not annoy me as much for licensing reasons as
it did for making it unable to get a rough estimate when the various
major versions of Emacs had been released.

-- 
David Kastrup

Re: Licensing of NEWS files?

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 10/15/2015 06:58 PM, David Kastrup wrote:

I don't disagree, but:

> quoting from the NEWS
> file in some article they are doing about a new release.

Isn't is Fair Use?

Re: Licensing of NEWS files?

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2015-10-15, at 18:13, Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> wrote:

> On 10/15/2015 06:58 PM, David Kastrup wrote:
>
> I don't disagree, but:
>
>> quoting from the NEWS
>> file in some article they are doing about a new release.
>
> Isn't is Fair Use?

Isn't Fair Use limited to US law?

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University

Re: Licensing of NEWS files?

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 10/15/2015 07:19 PM, Marcin Borkowski wrote:

> Isn't Fair Use limited to US law?

I believe so. But Emacs copyright is registered in the US.

Re: Licensing of NEWS files?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Dmitry Gutov writes:
 > On 10/15/2015 07:19 PM, Marcin Borkowski wrote:
 > 
 > > Isn't Fair Use limited to US law?

Yes and no.  Some other jurisdictions (eg, Japan) have legal
provisions that implement the same kind of exceptions; the U.S. leaves
it up to the judge.  (Like "My Fair Lady", "fair" use is beautiful in
the eye of the beholder, not "just".)  Giving the practice of leaving
it up to the judge legal status ("fair use" is mentioned in the law)
is unique to the U.S., I believe.

 > I believe so. But Emacs copyright is registered in the US.

Irrelevant.  Under the Berne Convention and other international law,
*copyright* is universal and automatic.  However, the rights of
various parties are defined by national law.  There may be cases where
acts in Germany are considered to be covered by U.S. law, but I doubt
Deutsche Allgemeine (sp?) quoting NEWS is.

David Kastrup writes:

 > Granted, that did not annoy me as much for licensing reasons as
 > it did for making it unable to get a rough estimate when the various
 > major versions of Emacs had been released.

Every source distribution of XEmacs has precise dates for historical
releases of both forks up to about 2004 (I don't know it they're
accurate, but I suppose they are pretty close) in the header comment
in emacs.c.  I believe the same information is available somewhere on
Jamie's site, perhaps more recently updated.

More recent releases should be in git.

Re: Licensing of NEWS files?

[David Kastrup]

Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> writes:

> On 2015-10-15, at 18:13, Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> wrote:
>
>> On 10/15/2015 06:58 PM, David Kastrup wrote:
>>
>> I don't disagree, but:
>>
>>> quoting from the NEWS
>>> file in some article they are doing about a new release.
>>
>> Isn't is Fair Use?
>
> Isn't Fair Use limited to US law?

Putting that aside: do we want it to be a problem to put up a reasonably
_complete_ NEWS file without appropriate license notices, modification
notices (the rest of Emacs is missing) and copy of GPL license?

Similarly to how we declare code examples in our Texinfo manuals as
"Public Domain" free for any use, I think that it would make sense to
similarly do so with the NEWS files.  The rationale most likely might be
that people cannot just rip them out without notice when distributing
Emacs, but the GPL pretty much allows that anyway when you leave an
appropriate notice of having done that.

Richard?  Any word on this?

-- 
David Kastrup

Re: Licensing of NEWS files?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
> Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 17:58:30 +0200
> 
> 
> Our various NEWS files, according to the license statement at the end,
> are distributed under the GPL.  That seems sort of overkill.

I'm not sure I agree.  Our NEWS includes non-trivial documentation.

> What actually annoyed me is that the various NEWS files are all also
> marked (c) 2015 in spite of not being really a part of the current
> Emacs.

What do you mean by "not part of the current Emacs"?  All the NEWS
files are included in a release tarball.

We always mark all files each year.

Re: Licensing of NEWS files?

[David Kastrup]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
>> Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 17:58:30 +0200
>> 
>> 
>> Our various NEWS files, according to the license statement at the end,
>> are distributed under the GPL.  That seems sort of overkill.
>
> I'm not sure I agree.  Our NEWS includes non-trivial documentation.

So?

>> What actually annoyed me is that the various NEWS files are all also
>> marked (c) 2015 in spite of not being really a part of the current
>> Emacs.
>
> What do you mean by "not part of the current Emacs"?  All the NEWS
> files are included in a release tarball.

Which is very much the definition of "mere aggregation".  Apart from the
NEWS itself (which is accessible with C-h N), the files are not
integrated with any part of Emacs code.  They are just sitting there.

> We always mark all files each year.

Obviously.  But those are historic files separate from the current
version of Emacs.  The content industry would love to remark copyrights
for anything it keeps in circulation as an unchanged addition to
something new.  It would be quite cheaper than bribing politicians for
retroactive copyright extensions every few decades.

-- 
David Kastrup

Re: Licensing of NEWS files?

[Paul Eggert]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1116 bytes --]

On 10/15/2015 08:58 AM, David Kastrup wrote:
> What actually annoyed me is that the various NEWS files are all also
> marked (c) 2015 in spite of not being really a part of the current
> Emacs.

This is according to US copyright law. A work that consists of many 
parts can have its copyright notice reproduced on each part, even the 
parts that don't change from one version to the next.

In the old days we kept track of each file's copyright years separately, 
and recorded exactly which years that file changed. Copyright law allows 
this older practice too, but it was more of a hassle and we went with a 
simpler approach. I would not like to go back.

> Granted, that did not annoy me as much for licensing reasons as
> it did for making it unable to get a rough estimate when the various
> major versions of Emacs had been released.

Yes, I've also run afoul of that. I attempted to help out by installing 
the attached patch. Some of this is from my vague recollections, some 
from random places on the Internet, and quite possibly I've made 
transcription errors; corrections and improvements are welcome.

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #2: 0001-New-file-etc-HISTORY.patch --]
[-- Type: text/x-patch; name="0001-New-file-etc-HISTORY.patch", Size: 4813 bytes --]

From d414a951a7981bb02774c809bf8c1329fb2e8132 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 14:59:43 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] New file etc/HISTORY

* admin/FOR-RELEASE: Procedure for etc/HISTORY.
* etc/HISTORY: New file.
* etc/NEWS: Mention it.
---
 admin/FOR-RELEASE |   2 +
 etc/HISTORY       | 154 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 etc/NEWS          |   1 +
 3 files changed, 157 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 etc/HISTORY

diff --git a/admin/FOR-RELEASE b/admin/FOR-RELEASE
index 327723f..6ecec89 100644
--- a/admin/FOR-RELEASE
+++ b/admin/FOR-RELEASE
@@ -107,6 +107,8 @@ sk	Miroslav Vaško
 ** cusver-check from admin.el can help find new defcustoms missing
 :version tags.
 
+** Add a line to etc/HISTORY for the release version number and date.
+
 * BUGS
 
 ** Check for modes which bind M-s that conflicts with a new global binding M-s
diff --git a/etc/HISTORY b/etc/HISTORY
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d19ca48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/etc/HISTORY
@@ -0,0 +1,154 @@
+	GNU Emacs versions and their release dates
+
+For more details about release contents, see the NEWS* files.
+
+Dates are approximate in the following list; some are when the version
+was made, some are when it was announced.
+
+
+GNU Emacs 1.0 through 1.12 were released in early 1985.
+The next release after 1.12 was 13.
+
+GNU Emacs 13 (1985-03-20)
+Initial release announced on Usenet.
+
+GNU Emacs 15.10 (1985-04-10)
+
+GNU Emacs 15.34 (1985-05-07)
+Last version 15 release.
+
+GNU Emacs 16.56 (1985-07-15)
+First version 16 release.
+
+GNU Emacs 16.57 (1985-09-16)
+
+GNU Emacs 16.58 (1985-09-17)
+
+GNU Emacs 16.59 (1985-09-17)
+
+GNU Emacs 16.60 (1985-09-19)
+
+GNU Emacs 17.36 (1985-12-20)
+First version 17 release.
+
+GNU Emacs 17.43 (1986-01-25)
+
+GNU Emacs 17.46 (1986-02-04)
+
+GNU Emacs 17.48 (1986-02-10)
+
+GNU Emacs 17.49 (1986-02-12)
+
+GNU Emacs 17.55 (1986-03-18)
+
+GNU Emacs 17.57 (1986-03-27)
+
+GNU Emacs 17.58 (1986-04-04)
+
+GNU Emacs 17.61 (1986-04-22)
+
+GNU Emacs 17.63 (1986-05-07)
+
+GNU Emacs 17.64 (1986-05-12)
+
+GNU Emacs 18.41 (1987-03-22)
+
+GNU Emacs 18.45 (1987-06-02)
+
+GNU Emacs 18.46 (1987-06-08)
+
+GNU Emacs 18.47 (1987-06-10)
+
+GNU Emacs 18.48 (1987-08-30)
+
+GNU Emacs 18.49 (1987-09-18)
+
+GNU Emacs 18.50 (1988-02-13)
+
+GNU Emacs 18.51 (1988-05-07)
+
+GNU Emacs 18.52 (1988-09-01)
+
+GNU Emacs 18.53 (1989-02-24)
+
+GNU Emacs 18.54 (1989-04-26)
+
+GNU Emacs 18.55 (1989-08-23)
+
+GNU Emacs 18.56 (1991-01-16)
+
+GNU Emacs 18.57 (1991-01-25)
+
+GNU Emacs 18.58 (1991-02-18)
+
+GNU Emacs 18.59 (1992-10-30)
+
+GNU Emacs 19.28 (1994-11-01)
+
+GNU Emacs 19.29 (1995-06-21)
+
+GNU Emacs 19.30 (1995-11-24)
+
+GNU Emacs 19.31 (1996-05-25)
+
+GNU Emacs 19.34 (1996-08-21)
+
+GNU Emacs 20.1 (1997-09-17)
+
+GNU Emacs 20.2 (1997-09-20)
+
+GNU Emacs 20.3 (1998-08-19)
+
+GNU Emacs 20.4 (1999-07-12)
+
+GNU Emacs 21.1 (2001-10-20)
+
+GNU Emacs 21.2 (2002-03-16)
+
+GNU Emacs 21.3 (2003-03-19)
+
+GNU Emacs 21.4 (2005-02-08)
+
+GNU Emacs 21.4a (2005-02-17)
+This is Emacs 21.4 with an updated notice in etc/PROBLEMS.
+
+GNU Emacs 22.1 (2007-06-02)
+
+GNU Emacs 22.2 (2008-03-26)
+
+GNU Emacs 22.3 (2008-09-05)
+
+GNU Emacs 23.1 (2009-07-29)
+
+GNU Emacs 23.2 (2010-05-08)
+
+GNU Emacs 23.3 (2011-03-10)
+
+GNU Emacs 23.4 (2012-01-29)
+
+GNU Emacs 24.1 (2012-06-10)
+
+GNU Emacs 24.2 (2012-08-27)
+
+GNU Emacs 24.3 (2013-03-10)
+
+GNU Emacs 24.4 (2014-10-20)
+
+GNU Emacs 24.5 (2015-04-10)
+
+\f
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+This file is part of GNU Emacs.
+
+GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
+it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
+the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
+(at your option) any later version.
+
+GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
+but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
+MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
+GNU General Public License for more details.
+
+You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
+along with GNU Emacs.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
diff --git a/etc/NEWS b/etc/NEWS
index dbe0de3..7b31357 100644
--- a/etc/NEWS
+++ b/etc/NEWS
@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@ If possible, use M-x report-emacs-bug.
 
 This file is about changes in Emacs version 25.
 
+See file HISTORY for a list of GNU Emacs versions and release dates.
 See files NEWS.24, NEWS.23, NEWS.22, NEWS.21, NEWS.20, NEWS.19, NEWS.18,
 and NEWS.1-17 for changes in older Emacs versions.
 
-- 
2.1.0

Re: Licensing of NEWS files?

[Xue Fuqiao]

On Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 6:05 AM, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:

>> Granted, that did not annoy me as much for licensing reasons as
>> it did for making it unable to get a rough estimate when the various
>> major versions of Emacs had been released.
>
> Yes, I've also run afoul of that. I attempted to help out by installing the
> attached patch. Some of this is from my vague recollections, some from
> random places on the Internet, and quite possibly I've made transcription
> errors; corrections and improvements are welcome.

I think etc/RELEASES or etc/RELEASE-HISTORY are better names than
etc/HISTORY if the content of the file only contains release version
numbers/dates.  IMO a file named HISTORY should be something like
these:

* https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/autoconf/manual/autoconf-2.69/html_node/History.html#History
* https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_node/History.html#History

Re: Licensing of NEWS files?

[Paul Eggert]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 390 bytes --]

Xue Fuqiao wrote:
> IMO a file named HISTORY should be something like
> these:
>
> *https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/autoconf/manual/autoconf-2.69/html_node/History.html#History
> *https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_node/History.html#History

Thanks for the suggestion; I installed the attached patch. More history could be 
written, but one step at a time.

[-- Attachment #2: 0001-etc-HISTORY-Add-some-more-history-plus-git-tags.patch --]
[-- Type: text/x-diff, Size: 4239 bytes --]

From f8e589c53254ec694fabb8caa657d8508f1b70f5 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2016 16:53:24 -0800
Subject: [PATCH] * etc/HISTORY: Add some more history, plus git tags.

---
 etc/HISTORY | 71 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++----------------------
 1 file changed, 46 insertions(+), 25 deletions(-)

diff --git a/etc/HISTORY b/etc/HISTORY
index 0426425..8107026 100644
--- a/etc/HISTORY
+++ b/etc/HISTORY
@@ -1,14 +1,35 @@
-	GNU Emacs versions and their release dates
+	GNU Emacs history, versions, and release dates
 
 For more details about release contents, see the NEWS* files.
 
+Most of the development history of GNU Emacs is available in its
+source code repository <http://savannah.gnu.org/git/?group=emacs>.
+However, in the early days GNU Emacs was developed without using
+version control systems and was published via half-inch 9-track
+1600-bpi magnetic tape reels.  Although information about this early
+development is sketchy, the following text summarizes what is known.
+
+EMACS started out as a set of macros atop the TECO text editor, and
+was first operational in late 1976.  It was inspired by earlier work
+such as the E editor of Stanford, and was based on older TECO macro
+sets.  EMACS in turn inspired several similar editors.  See:
+Stallman RM. EMACS: The Extensible, Customizable Self-Documenting
+Display Editor.  AI Memo 519a, MIT, 1981-03-26
+<http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/5736/AIM-519A.pdf>.
+
+In 1984, work began on GNU Emacs, a fresh implementation designed to
+run on GNU and GNU-like systems, with a full-featured Lisp at its
+core.  GNU Emacs 1.0 through 1.12 were released in early 1985.  The
+next version after 1.12 was 13; this was the initial public release.
+
+Here is a list of known GNU Emacs stable releases starting with the
+initial public release.  Entries in the list are of the form "GNU
+Emacs N (DATE) TAG", where N is the version number, DATE the release
+date, and TAG (if present) the corresponding tag in the source code
+repository.  Any commentary about the version starts on the next line.
 Dates are approximate in the following list; some are when the version
 was made, some are when it was announced.
 
-
-GNU Emacs 1.0 through 1.12 were released in early 1985.
-The next release after 1.12 was 13.
-
 GNU Emacs 13 (1985-03-20)
 Initial release announced on Usenet.
 
@@ -135,15 +156,15 @@ GNU Emacs 19.32 (1996-07-31)
 
 GNU Emacs 19.33 (1996-08-11)
 
-GNU Emacs 19.34 (1996-08-21)
+GNU Emacs 19.34 (1996-08-21) emacs-19.34
 
-GNU Emacs 20.1 (1997-09-15)
+GNU Emacs 20.1 (1997-09-15) emacs-20.1
 
-GNU Emacs 20.2 (1997-09-19)
+GNU Emacs 20.2 (1997-09-19) emacs-20.2
 
-GNU Emacs 20.3 (1998-08-19)
+GNU Emacs 20.3 (1998-08-19) emacs-20.3
 
-GNU Emacs 20.4 (1999-07-12)
+GNU Emacs 20.4 (1999-07-12) emacs-20.4
 
 GNU Emacs 20.5 (1999-12-04)
 
@@ -151,40 +172,40 @@ GNU Emacs 20.6 (2000-02-15)
 
 GNU Emacs 20.7 (2000-06-13)
 
-GNU Emacs 21.1 (2001-10-20)
+GNU Emacs 21.1 (2001-10-20) emacs-21.1
 
-GNU Emacs 21.2 (2002-03-16)
+GNU Emacs 21.2 (2002-03-16) emacs-21.2
 
-GNU Emacs 21.3 (2003-03-19)
+GNU Emacs 21.3 (2003-03-19) emacs-21.3
 
 GNU Emacs 21.4 (2005-02-08)
 
 GNU Emacs 21.4a (2005-02-17)
 This is Emacs 21.4 with an updated notice in etc/PROBLEMS.
 
-GNU Emacs 22.1 (2007-06-02)
+GNU Emacs 22.1 (2007-06-02) emacs-22.1
 
-GNU Emacs 22.2 (2008-03-26)
+GNU Emacs 22.2 (2008-03-26) emacs-22.2
 
-GNU Emacs 22.3 (2008-09-05)
+GNU Emacs 22.3 (2008-09-05) emacs-22.3
 
-GNU Emacs 23.1 (2009-07-29)
+GNU Emacs 23.1 (2009-07-29) emacs-23.1
 
-GNU Emacs 23.2 (2010-05-08)
+GNU Emacs 23.2 (2010-05-08) emacs-23.2
 
-GNU Emacs 23.3 (2011-03-10)
+GNU Emacs 23.3 (2011-03-10) emacs-23.3
 
-GNU Emacs 23.4 (2012-01-29)
+GNU Emacs 23.4 (2012-01-29) emacs-23.4
 
-GNU Emacs 24.1 (2012-06-10)
+GNU Emacs 24.1 (2012-06-10) emacs-24.1
 
-GNU Emacs 24.2 (2012-08-27)
+GNU Emacs 24.2 (2012-08-27) emacs-24.2
 
-GNU Emacs 24.3 (2013-03-10)
+GNU Emacs 24.3 (2013-03-10) emacs-24.3
 
-GNU Emacs 24.4 (2014-10-20)
+GNU Emacs 24.4 (2014-10-20) emacs-24.4
 
-GNU Emacs 24.5 (2015-04-10)
+GNU Emacs 24.5 (2015-04-10) emacs-24.5
 
 \f
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
-- 
2.5.0

Re: Licensing of NEWS files?

[Xue Fuqiao]

On Mon, Feb 1, 2016 at 8:56 AM, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
> Xue Fuqiao wrote:
>>
>> IMO a file named HISTORY should be something like
>> these:
>>
>>
>> *https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/autoconf/manual/autoconf-2.69/html_node/History.html#History
>>
>> *https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_node/History.html#History
>
> Thanks for the suggestion; I installed the attached patch. More history
> could be written, but one step at a time.

Thank you!

Re: Licensing of NEWS files?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
> Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 15:05:53 -0700
> 
> > Granted, that did not annoy me as much for licensing reasons as
> > it did for making it unable to get a rough estimate when the various
> > major versions of Emacs had been released.
> 
> Yes, I've also run afoul of that. I attempted to help out by installing 
> the attached patch. Some of this is from my vague recollections, some 
> from random places on the Internet, and quite possibly I've made 
> transcription errors; corrections and improvements are welcome.

Thanks, I added information about additional releases I had in my
archives.  I found just a couple of inaccuracies and corrected them.