Re: GPLv3 or later -- Lispref files refers to text in lispref.text
Andreas Roehler writes:
[Worrying that future versions may be published under a license one
dislikes is] not logical for me, as the file published with an
older license will not vanish with a newer.
Trust me, it is logical to a lot of people. Please accept that and
move on; it is not something you can disprove with logic.
Lets avoid that nightmare of negotiations. Lets accept Emacs as a
present and lets send presents back.
I'm not sure how you see that happening. Emacs is not interested in
gifts given by programmers; it wants red tape, too. We can't afford
to systematically provide that red tape (and I for one don't want to).
The best we can do at this point is to (1) make sure that our code is
100% legally compatible with Emacs, so that 3rd party developers can
use code licensed under GPLv3 in XEmacs packages. Then (2) make our
interfaces as compatible as possible with Emacs so that 3rd party
developers have less unnecessary work to do. (3) Maybe someday
provide an intermediate level of red tape (reliable documentation of
authorship) so that the FSF can do the parts we don't care about
(acquire title and corporate disclaimers) if it would be cheaper for
them to use our code than to write their own.
One reason I'm so sticky about asking for clear permission from
authors is #3. If even one case comes up where it is clear that we
unilaterally changed a permission notice without bothering to check
with the author, the FSF will *never* become willing to copy code from
XEmacs.
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