From: Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic(a)srce.hr&gt; Date: 14 Oct 1998 10:30:07 +0200 You mean, if Microsoft provided, say, a fully functional 95/98/NT port and we didn't get to see the source, you wouldn't be incredibly pissed? That's correct. Naturally, I'd prefer that they release the source, but the benefits to the emacs community would be very significant. To put the question back to you. What if Microsoft were to view XEmacs as a spec and, without using any GPLed code, implement a fully compatible, fully functional 95/98/NT implementation. How would we be hurt? By having the emacs user community grow too large?! That's OK as CMUCL is PD. XEmacs is GPL, which is the license specifically designed to prevent this kind of thing. That was my point, well part of it anyway -- CMU Common Lisp was put in the Public Domain in part to explicitly allow this sort of thing to occur, i. e. to maximize the freedom of the source code. It doesn't particularly bother me that XEmacs is distributed under the GPL and I don't think it's avoidable given its roots. However, I certainly encourage people to release free code into the Public Domain or at least to use a less restrictive copyright than the GPL. Stallman's lawyers convinced him that, if he has an assignment paper for every contributor, all of the source would be under his control, and the FSF would be able to sue. Be that as it may, I still believe that an FSF suit against Microsoft would be a joke. I am not a lawyer, so I don't know how to answer your sentence. I know that Stallman didn't just invent the assignments; he got the legal advice. It strike me as what I like to call ``a rationalization so good it almost makes a reason''. Ultimately, RMS likes to be in control, period. Rick