Need info about public domain Emacs

[Chuck Wegrzyn]

A while back I was told by a friend that there is floating
around a public domain copy of Gosling's Emacs. I was
wondering if this is true? If so, does anyone have it? Could
I get a copy of it?

Chuck Wegrzyn
{allegra,decvax,ihnp4}!encore!wegrzyn

[Karl Kleinpaste]

----------

> A while back I was told by a friend that there is floating
> around a public domain copy of Gosling's Emacs. I was
> wondering if this is true? If so, does anyone have it? Could
> I get a copy of it?

----------
In the interest of what I hope will be clarification...

There is no version of Gosling's Emacs which is public domain. All versions
that have managed to get out of C-MU have notices in them proclaiming that
the software is copyrighted. As an example, here are the contents of a file
which I have in my Emacs source directory:
_____________________________________________________________________
]Please remember that Emacs is copyrighted. You are free to use Emacs
]internally, but you are not free to redistribute it. If someone is
]interested in obtaining a copy of Emacs, refer them to me:
]
] James Gosling [Gosling@CMUA]
] Computer Science
] Carnegie-Mellon University
] Pittsburgh PA
] 15213
_____________________________________________________________________
So sayeth The Man, it's his code and that's that. Notwithstanding that
fact, there are versions, previous to being taken over by Unipress, which
need (legally speaking) no more than Mr Gosling's say-so in order to
distribute to another person/site. I have done so on exactly one occasion.
The trick is to get a hold of Mr Gosling, not always a trivial task. The
version I run is Emacs #85, very old, and Mr Gosling has the only claim to
lay against it. If you can find someone with a copy of something like this,
and they can find Mr Gosling and get his permission, then go for it, you can
get Emacs that way.

Note, however, that Mr Gosling resists these suggestions, and rightly so;
the more recent versions of Emacs have loads of bug fixes and improvements
(my version hasn't yet been hacked for 4.2BSD, for example), and hence an
old version like #85 is not entirely a Good Thing to give to another person.
And, of course, there is the fact that Mr Gosling gets no royalty when a
copy of #85 or similar version is given to someone else. Considering the
amount of time he put into it, I think he deserves a royalty or two along
the way.

Please do not write to me, asking me to get permission from Mr Gosling
again, so that I can send you a copy of what I've got. I did so just once,
as a special favor to a friend, and consider it to have been very gracious
of Mr Gosling to have given me such permission once. I will not abuse a
privilege like that.

In conclusion, then: No, there is no public domain Gosling's Emacs. Yes,
there are versions you can get, with some difficulty, without paying the
(rather high) price which Unipress charges. No, Mr Gosling will not want to
give permission to do so very often.

This is the situation as I understand it. If I've made any mistakes here,
they are simply that -- mistakes -- and I sincerely hope that any
publicly-posted corrections will be just that -- corrections, not flames.

[The above address <Gosling@CMUA> is no longer correct. I don't know where
to reach him any more.]
--
Karl Kleinpaste @ Bell Labs, Columbus 614/860-5107 +==-> cbrma!kk
@ Ohio State University 614/422-0915 osu-eddie!karl