BSD-like licensed files in XEmacs Packages?

Mats Lidell writes: Yes (there are a number of such variations in GNU Emacs, and the CMU Mach code at the core of the HURD is all BSD-like, or maybe public domain), but that's not the problem. The problem is whether anyone may distribute an Elisp file under anything but the GPL. If the Elisp file uses only typical Lisp constructs such as `car' and `let' and `cond', there's no problem. But if it accesses Emacs features like buffers, then according to the Honorary Dr. Stallman and his Leagle Beagle, that's linking, and the GPL requires that that code be distributed under the terms of the GPL or not at all, until there is an implementation of Emacs Lisp that isn't derived from GNU Emacs. (Aside to Mike: maybe it's time.... :) I doubt the FSF would chase an individual author who just dumps such code on a website with a BSD license. But I can't imagine they'd be happy with us doing the same, since we also distribute a derivative of Emacs under the GPL. If the license is GPL-degradable, we really ought to just degrade to GPL and add a pointer in the documentation to the distribution with a more permissive license (as we did with Choi's Carbon port). Hopefully the authors of go-lang mode will be more reasonable than Choi was.... _______________________________________________ XEmacs-Beta mailing list XEmacs-Beta(a)xemacs.org http://lists.xemacs.org/mailman/listinfo/xemacs-beta