Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site mit-athena.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!mit-athena!martillo From: martillo@mit-athena.UUCP (Joaquim Martillo) Newsgroups: net.emacs Subject: Gnu Emacs & Copyright Laws Message-ID: <287@mit-athena.UUCP> Date: Mon, 15-Jul-85 12:08:39 EDT Article-I.D.: mit-athe.287 Posted: Mon Jul 15 12:08:39 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 17-Jul-85 06:27:29 EDT Reply-To: martillo@mit-athena.UUCP (Joaquim Martillo) Distribution: net Organization: MIT Project Athena Lines: 80 Unlike RMS I am not driven by ideological fervor to take a stand against "software hoarding." I was willing to "prostitute" myself and work for ATT Bell Laboratories. But I learned Unix in the days when the government forbade ATT to sell Unix as a product. The material which came out of the Computer Research Group then was much more interesting than the substandard Unix called 5V2. The computer research software was interesting because the research group was able to give and receive ideas from the university environment. Now ATT is so paranoic about protecting "trade secrets" that they NIH (NDH)'ed almost every interesting idea in the system. Xerox's paranoia basically kept almost everyone from learning about some of the interesting new computer ideas developed in their research environment and in the end this paranoic concealment of ideas is harming Xerox. RMS could easily be correct that the current system of industrial software development hinders both research and harms business. The justification that someone must pay for the development environment is incorrect because hardware is worthless without good software. Therefore the hardware manufactures have an interest in seeing good new software freely available. The current situation needs people to take strong stands against ridiculously rigid interpretations of copyright laws. If I compose a piece of written material, the convention is I can use three consecutive words from someone else's writings unattributed. In scholarly literature, properly attributed quotation is considered acceptable up to about 20% of the composition. A ridiculously rigid interpretation of the copyright laws could easily require an author to get permission for every single quote, but this is silly and everyone knows it. Software copyright law is still relatively new and no one knows the commonsense measure. This lack of commonsense measure is being used to scare people. I would suggest 1 pages of unattributed code (of generic functions like strcpy) in a software project of at least moderate size is acceptable. In a similar project, complaining about 10% or less attributed code is silly. Now the disputed modules in Gnu Emacs constitue about 5% of the code and I suspect less than 10% of the original version of Gosling's emacs. Further of the modules which contain Gosling's copyright, Trm.h (a 3 page module) has about 50% (by line excluding comments) of its code in common with the current version of Unipress Emacs. The difference between the current version of Unipress Emacs and Gnu Emacs dsp.c (a 5 page module) is 90%. The differences between current version of Unipress Emacs and Gnu Emacs display.c (a 19 page module) is about 80%. For all the modules which Fen LeBalme gave RMS permission to use, the differences are similar. Unipress is not even using the disputed software anymore! Now, these modules contain code people like Chris Torek and others contributed when Gosling's emacs was in the public domain. I must wonder whether these people would have contributed had they known their freely-given code was going to become part of someone's product. The use of this freely-given code in the product seems rather questionable if this code does not remain freely available for others to use even despite the copyright notice. Trying to forbid RMS from using discarded code so that he must spend time to reinvent the wheel supports his contention that "software hoarders" are slowing down progress in computer science. If using the discarded code is wrong, I must wonder why display.c (p. 10) contains the following notice. /****************************************************************************\ * * * The following hack and all following lines involving the variable * * "DoneEarly" cause the bottom line of the screen to be redisplayed before * * any others if it has changed and it would be redrawn in-place. This is * * purely for Emacs, people using this package for other things might want to * * lobotomize this section. * * * \****************************************************************************/