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

Mats Lidell <matsl(a)xemacs.org&gt; writes: David is not the copyright holder of AUCTeX. The FSF is. If the FSF would decide to make this an issue, AUCTeX would be the least of the XEmacs developers' problems. Anyway, "somewhere" does not cut it with regard to the requirements of the GPL. The mirrors of the Sumo archive would also have to mirror the respective sources. There is a reason that _all_ Linux distribution package formats also feature source packages, and _all_ mirrors carry them, and they are sold alongside with the binaries (even when we are talking about "noarch" packages that don't compile any compiled material). So anyway, catering for the GPL source provision for AUCTeX separately would be pretty pointless as an isolated measure. I am not threatening any action with AUCTeX anyway (indeed, my current concern with AUCTeX/XEmacs is rather the complete absence of any action) but am pointing out, not for the first time, that the XEmacs package system, as it is currently implemented and employed, is generally not a suitable infrastructure for distributing packages licensed under the GPL since it does not cater for distribution of the scripts and definition files used for creating that package, in the preferred form for modification (in fact, the only form that will get accepted into distribution by XEmacs developers). Since the missing ingredients (basically makefile and package-info.in AFAICS) carry almost no weight compared to the rest of such a package, it is a pity that the only reaction one can get on this list is this rather pointless face-saving, word-twisting, please-no-changes sort of denial. But that is nothing new, and hardly likely to change. -- 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