"SL Baur" <steve(a)xemacs.org&gt; writes: Backdated activism like this is one of the reason the Free Software Foundation requires copyright assignments for contributions to Emacs. Which would mean that XEmacs as a whole can only be released under GPL V2, spelling an end to synchronization with Emacs (and possibly other Elisp projects) once the latter is moved to GPLv3. Well, I frequently get the impression that several of its developers are doing their best to put a stop to that, and your mail certainly falls into that class. While lashing out against Richard Stallman certainly is quite within the old XEmacs spirit, it would sometimes be nice if people considered the consequences and implications of their actions. Not only will this spell doom for keeping XEmacs competitive, but it will also make the point that Richard Stallman was right from the start in his fuzziness regarding the insistence about copyright assignments, thus not giving any single contributor the possibility to throw a monkey wrench into future development. It is not my task to ask you to reconsider, and I will gladly leave that unthankful task to others, regardless of whether they choose to pick it up or not. -- David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum _______________________________________________ XEmacs-Beta mailing list XEmacs-Beta(a)xemacs.org http://calypso.tux.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xemacs-beta

Didier Verna <didier(a)xemacs.org&gt; writes: Yes and no. The vast bulk of software "(C) FSF" has been transferred to them using a copyright assignment. The form this copyright assignments takes is a contract between _two_ parties. The FSF spells out that it will only release the software under terms that don't differentiate between the FSF and the general public, and there are several other guarantees. If the FSF could not release the majority of code (C) FSF under future versions of the GPL without violating their contracts to copyright assigners, that would be quite pointless. Basically, it boils down to whether you'd rather trust the FSF to keep to its promises and its course and spirit, or trust legislation, technology and politics to refrain from coming up with new ways to eventually render the current GPL versions ineffective. I'd rather sign my blank check to the FSF than to a faceless army of politicians, legislators and corporate lawyers. And that's basically the choice it boils down to _unless_ all contributors (or copyright holders) remain permanently available for an unanimous agreement on relicensing if necessitated by events. Only when people are guaranteed to remain accessible and reasonable (which is not too frequent, I am afraid, sometimes for as mundane reasons as death), one can delay signing a check to whenever it becomes necessary. In a way, you sign a blank check whenever you vote in a representative democracy. You can decide who you are addressing it to, but that's basically it. -- David Kastrup _______________________________________________ XEmacs-Beta mailing list XEmacs-Beta(a)xemacs.org http://calypso.tux.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xemacs-beta

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen(a)xemacs.org&gt; writes: I am not surprised. You explained the reason why it may be the best option for a large scale project with a considerable upstream code base (c) FSF and like to follow the GPL license progression. For a single-person or otherwise closed-circle project, not using the "or at your option any later version" clause causes no immediate problem: the person will always be able to actually change the license whenever he consider a new license better. For such a project, indeed I would be hard to come up with a good reasoning. The best is probably that it might keep others from using and/or contributing, and that if anything happens to the author at one time (he dies or gets fatally disinterested in any paperwork), his project might increasingly get unused because of license incompatibilities and because companies get better ideas about how to endrun GPL versions from a later date. I'd perfectly understand Steven Baur to express his dislike and distrust of Stallman by not giving people the "or later" option for private software of his, and that's probably similar to what Didier had asked Richard Stallman about. But for XEmacs, the consequences of such an individual action will cause quite more problems for XEmacs than they ever could affect Stallman. It really reminded me of the "Life of Brian" motion picture's entry of a "suicide commando" close to the end of the film. -- David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum _______________________________________________ XEmacs-Beta mailing list XEmacs-Beta(a)xemacs.org http://calypso.tux.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xemacs-beta

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen(a)xemacs.org&gt; writes: I love you, too. It's not like I am not used to it. -- David Kastrup _______________________________________________ XEmacs-Beta mailing list XEmacs-Beta(a)xemacs.org http://calypso.tux.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xemacs-beta

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen(a)xemacs.org&gt; writes: I have no reliable clue which will go first: Emacs 22 or GPLv3 (certainly hope for the former, since it is high time). If it is the latter, it is to be expected that Emacs will be made the forerunner for the latter. That would make the problems start right away: synching XEmacs to some prerelease of Emacs 22 would likely import some problems fixed in the final release, synching to Emacs 21.4 would be a waste of lots of developments. Even if GPLv3 would come later into Emacs' life, that would just postpone the problem. And licensing problems don't tend to get easier by waiting. You mean: their effect on corporate contributions. The way it looks, I think the uptake will be positive from corporations: the apparently corporatically attractive CPL and similar licenses are incompatible with GPLv2 mostly because of GPLv3-like patent provisions. As one example, Sun has expressed quite a bit of intentions about releasing OpenSolaris under GPLv3 once it is out (taken with a big grain of salt, but nevertheless). Which would actually be a setback for GNU/Linux in some camps, and thus a quite interesting business move, if they actually follow through. Anyway, I get the impression that the main rationale for shooting the messenger in this thread has shifted to "I don't like his face". Well, I suppose I can live with that. -- David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum _______________________________________________ XEmacs-Beta mailing list XEmacs-Beta(a)xemacs.org http://calypso.tux.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xemacs-beta