Software Sabotage

[RMS%MIT-OZ@mit-mc]

Each time the commercial marketing of Unix Emacs causes someone
to forego it due to price, or to be unable to use it as he would
have liked to due to license restrictions, society as a whole
has been sabotaged a certain amount.

Gosling does deserve a considerable reward for having written
a useful program, but sadly he deserves to lose a lot of that
as penalty for sabotaging its use now that it is written.

Don't let yourself be sabotaged!

Meanwhile, if you are thinking you may be stuck with paying these
prices, and you don't belive in doing something illegal even
if it is good for the world, you still have an alternative.
An editor is being written in NIL. It's at an early stage
but it's far enough along for its implementor to use it to
edit as he adds to it. A Unix that can support shared programs
is coming from Berkeley. NIL for Unix is being worked on
(and for VMS is already available, and public). Since this
will be a true Emacs rather than a semi-ersatz one, it will be
far better than Goslings.

This editor is supposed to be publicly available.
So just hold on a while -- help is on the way.
Sooner if you can help with the work.

Note: I am amazed to hear of programs being "destroyed"
by being public domain. Are Gosling and I on the same planet?
I suspect most of the Arpanet community would much prefer
if Unix Emacs were public domain.

Note 2: Is Gosling going to pay out a share of the royalties
to all of you who contributed extensions when you were under
the misapprehension that you were working for the common good?
-------

[rlgvax!guy]

I get the feeling Gosling has real work to do; does he also have time to
put out endless free copies of his Emacs and provide upgrades, support, etc.?
Sorry, son, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Just because he wrote
a good and popular editor doesn't mean its users have a right to chain him
to that program.

Guy Harris
RLG Corporation
{seismo,mcnc,we13}!rlgvax!guy