Re: [comp.emacs.xemacs] AUCTeX 11.84 released

Let me try to briefly set the record straight as to what I believe are the technical facts relevant to determining whether XEmacs packages are conformant to the GPL requirement to distribute source. of each package.[1] The first derivative version is distributed only as source (and therefore has no problem with that requirement), as part of the collective work known as the "XEmacs package CVS repository." This is the preferred version for development activity. The second version of each package, which is a separate derivative Work (see footnote 1), is a *binary-with-source distribution* that has the following properties: 1. The files that need processing (ie, Lisp) are in the right place. 2. The objects produced by processing them (ie, the .elcs) automatically are installed in the right place (ie, next to the corresponding .el). The required processor is part of the core XEmacs binary and its associated Lisp. 3. The auto-autoloads.el file is produced by a processor which is part of the core XEmacs binary and its associated Lisp. 4. Other data files are in the right place; they can be edited to the user's taste in place. 5. We provide prebuilt auto-autoloads and .elcs for convenience. There is no need for a Makefile, because everything that needs to be edited or rebuilt is already in place. If a new entry point has been added, M-x update-autoload-files rebuilds the auto-autoloads file. Then M-x byte-recompile-directory will do everything that is needed. Installing other than to an installed XEmacs package tree is not required; our *binary-with-source distribution* is restricted by design to use in that context. Installing, other than by unpacking the tarball, is not required; our *binary-with-source distribution* is designed to be unpacked in the installation destination. Creating the tarball, whether upstream-style or an XEmacs *-pkg.tar.gz, is not required, because the tarball is the *medium*, not the *message*. If you want any of those features (and they are all desirable, of course!), you would be well-advised to use either the XEmacs CVS repository version or the upstream AUCTeX version. In other words, you have to look at what we actually *do* distribute as a "binary-with-source" distribution to see whether it really is necessary to distribute Makefiles etc for it. The GPL doesn't say "you must provide all the infrastructure needed to set up as a competing distributor". The GPL doesn't say "you must provide a source package in the same format that you received it". The GPL doesn't say "you must provide sources that can be used to build all the configurations imaginable." It says "you must provide the sources for the executable you distribute, as well as the scripts used to build it." We do. It happens that AFAICS no scripts are needed to build the executable. Furthermore, in practice *no scripts are used* to build from the "binary with source" distribution. I do edit and rebuild packages in the installed tree frequently, and have never felt a need for a script (with the single exception of rather old versions of VM---for which we *do* provide the Makefile!) It's possible that the generic description above doesn't apply to the AUCTeX package in particular, but I've seen no specific description of such features of AUCTeX. It is true that a script is used in building the distribution, and therefore the specific instance of the executable in the tarball. The literal interpretation of "scripts used to build it" as meaning "in the physical history of the distributed executable" is plausible, of course. But I think the interpretation of "used" as hypothetical (ie, "scripts used to build it [in case you had modified it]") is more in keeping with the intent and spirit of the rest of the GPL, which tries to give maximum freedom for creating derivative works attuned to user needs, without sacrificing those users' freedoms to "change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs". Footnotes: [1] This is trivial. If you change one comma, you have produced a derivative work. So, actually, we are trivally able to distribute hundreds of different derivative versions of AUCTeX, at least two for every patch in the CVS repository. To be pedantically precise, I should say not "two versions" but "two classes of versions". _______________________________________________ XEmacs-Beta mailing list XEmacs-Beta(a)xemacs.org http://calypso.tux.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xemacs-beta