On the PublicDomain-ness of MicroEmacs
NEVILLE%uma...@csnet-relay.arpa
>>From: intelca!c...@caip.rutgers.edu (Chuck McManis)
>>
>> At risk of sounding over-fastidious, do you have permission
>> to port and distribute this? Is it public domain?
>>
>> --
>> scott preece
>> gould/csd - urbana
>
>EMACS (the original) and also GnuEMACS are both public domain.
>
>Some peoples implementation of EMACS arent. (Unipress comes to mind)
>
>--Chuck McManis
Chuck,
i think you didn't answer the question completely. And your reply
could be misleading to some people who don't know the facts. Presumably
when you say "EMACS (the original)" you are referring to RMS's program
done at the MIT AI lab. Many people, however, consider "original Emacs"
to be James Gosling's Emacs done at CMU. This is a horse of an entirely
different flavor, and according to Gosling himself no part of it is really
in the public domain. That is to say that while he did give away and support
early versions, he did not authorize random redistribution. When support
became too time-consuming and he *had* to finish his PhD, he sold Emacs
to UniPress. So UniPress sells not their own implementation of Emacs,
but their own modification of Gosling Emacs. He cleared all this up a
few months ago in the ARPAnet Info-Vax notesfile. The discussion there
was instigated by a question about the Public-Domain -ness of GNU Emacs.
Which brings us back to RMS (Richard M. Stallman). His GNU Emacs (GNU
is a public domain OS under development and stands for GNU's Not Unix,
although it will run any Unix program) was very loosely based on a version
of Gosling's and some Gosling code was in fact distribituted with GNU Emacs.
It turned out that there had been a misunderstanding of terms somewhere
between RMS and Gosling, and RMS removed all Gosling code from his Emacs
to avoid further problems.
You have said that your MicroEmacs was a ported and modified version of
an IBM-PC MicroEmacs by another author. Of course this chaining could
go on quite a ways, but the question that needs to be answered is:
********
IS THIS IMPLEMENTATION FREE OF PROPRIETARY CODE (INTACT OR MODIFIED)
FROM GOSLING, UNIPRESS, CCA, OR ANYONE ELSE?
********
Don't take this as a rebuke, by any means. i am grateful for your work
on this and would really like to have a copy of the program (i don't
subscribe to net.sources or Unix-Sources and can't FTP to ARPA sites)
if it is really in the public domain. Proprietary source is tempting
to use (i know, i have access to 3 proprietary Emacs sources, and need
Emacs on my micro) when it is available and i would hate (for anyone)
to unwittingly get stuck with it.
i posted this to info-amiga/net.amiga so that other interested users
could watch for the final answer. Please post a reply here so we
could all find out together!
Looking forward to a "YES",
Neville D. Newman
neville.UMass-cs@CSnet-relay (ARPA)
* at least three words in the above
text are trademarks. Pick your
favorites.
George Jones
>
>IS THIS IMPLEMENTATION FREE OF PROPRIETARY CODE (INTACT OR MODIFIED)
>FROM GOSLING, UNIPRESS, CCA, OR ANYONE ELSE?
>********
>
> could watch for the final answer. Please post a reply here so we
> could all find out together!
>
> Looking forward to a "YES",
>
> Neville D. Newman
> neville.UMass-cs@CSnet-relay (ARPA)
>
YES. As I stated before my criteria for obtaining the sources for MicroEMACS
was that it be public domain. I wanted to port a version of Emacs to the
Amiga for public consumption. The header says it is public domain and is
lacking any sort of copyright notice. As to using any of Gosling's code
or any other proprietary code I can't say one way or the other. I am not
the author.
So there it is. Go to it. Emacs away.
One final thing...I think that the source should be genneraly available now
that it has been posted to net.sources and is available for FTPing. I am
hesitating to send out all 180K of sources again (via INFO-AMIGA). I would
much prefer to mail copies to anyone that still has not been able to get
a copy (I have posted the sources to CompuServe if you would prefer to get
them there...look in the Amiga Forum). If you want a copy send a stamped
self addressed mailer to me at 8080 Flint Rd. Worthington, Ohio, 43085.
-----------
George M. Jones cbosgd!osu-eddie!george (uucp)
(614) 885-5102 (home) geo...@ohio-state.csnet (csnet)
(614) 457-8600 (work) 70003,2443 (CompusServe)
--
-----------
George M. Jones cbosgd!osu-eddie!george (uucp)
(614) 885-5102 (home) geo...@ohio-state.csnet (csnet)
(614) 457-8600 (work) 70003,2443 (CompusServe)
John Gilmore
> different flavor, and according to Gosling himself no part of it is really
> in the public domain. That is to say that while he did give away and support
> early versions, he did not authorize random redistribution.
This is not *quite* true. During the Salt Lake City Usenix I approached
James about putting the regular expression code from his Emacs into the
public domain. (We wanted to use it in the uucp mail routing software.)
He wrote out a little statement that we could have the code and redistribute it
to anybody, and signed it. Quote:
"The Usenix/UUCP project has my permission to use the regular
expression pattern matcher from EMACS. James Gosling, 6/14/84"
So the regular expression code from Gosling Emacs is in the public domain,
but the rest of it is not. (I checked this today with James and he agrees.)
Ron Natalie <ron>
> expression pattern matcher from EMACS. James Gosling, 6/14/84"
>
> So the regular expression code from Gosling Emacs is in the public domain,
> but the rest of it is not. (I checked this today with James and he agrees.)
Eh, I'd watch the derived statement here. Gosling may have said that the
RE code is in the public domain, but you can't infer that from the indented
statement.
BTW, JOVE, I believe, uses pieces of code borrowed from the UNIX editors,
which is why it is not freely distributed but only to UNIX source sites.
-Ron