From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
Cc: miles@gnu.org, stephen@xemacs.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org, storm@cua.dk
Subject: Re: Lawyer's evaluation
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 08:06:32 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <E1A2UtE-0004Nx-1b@fencepost.gnu.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <877k3yxxjx.fsf@tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> (stephen@xemacs.org)
Kim> "Free" means that all users have the freedom to study, share,
Kim> change and improve Emacs. In fact, you may freely use and
Kim> modify Emacs for your own purposes without knowing any of the
Kim> details of the GPL.
This is misleading; in order to modify Emacs you must accept the GPL.
The GPL doesn't put any limits on private modification, so this
is a distinction without practical consequences.
Kim> However, once you distribute your changes to others, you
Kim> should be aware that the conditions and rights in the GPL
Kim> will extend to cover your changes as well, so before doing
In fact, it implies acceptance of the license.
That is true.
That means we really
need to say that such distribution must follow the terms of the
license.
It might be desirable to say that.
I don't see how that can happen if the user doesn't read it.
Maybe it can't, but please note that if the user has not accepted the
license, he is infringing the copyright by distributing without
authorization. So this is not a real issue for us.
Kim> Also, if you write and distribute an extension to Emacs in
Kim> Emacs Lisp (the extension language used by Emacs), that
Kim> extension will be covered by the GPL too, as running such an
Kim> extension requires "linking" with Emacs.
This is true only if you put a strict interpretation on Emacs Lisp,
ie, those parts of Lisp that are unique to Emacs Lisp. True, in
practice it's hard to imagine substantial Lisp applications that don't
do buffer I/O, etc, being written in Emacs Lisp, but it's possible.
That is correct. The statement would have to be at least somewhat modified.
Also, I agree that we should put this in the FAQ instead.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2003-09-25 12:06 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 14+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2003-09-18 22:44 Lawyer's evaluation Richard Stallman
2003-09-18 23:16 ` Miles Bader
2003-09-19 13:56 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2003-09-22 2:02 ` Miles Bader
2003-09-24 5:27 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2003-09-25 12:05 ` Richard Stallman
2003-09-24 9:10 ` Kim F. Storm
2003-09-24 10:58 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2003-09-24 12:19 ` Kim F. Storm
2003-09-24 14:41 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2003-09-25 12:06 ` Richard Stallman [this message]
2003-09-25 12:06 ` Richard Stallman
2003-09-25 12:42 ` David Kastrup
2003-09-26 9:53 ` Richard Stallman
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