Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site mit-eddie.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!mit-eddie!barmar From: barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin) Newsgroups: net.emacs Subject: Re: Commercial vs. Public Domain Message-ID: <4700@mit-eddie.UUCP> Date: Tue, 16-Jul-85 00:42:04 EDT Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.4700 Posted: Tue Jul 16 00:42:04 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 17-Jul-85 08:10:26 EDT References: <969@sdcsvax.UUCP> <1633@ecsvax.UUCP> <2980@nsc.UUCP> Reply-To: barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin) Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA Lines: 24 In article <2980@nsc.UUCP> chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: ... >but that doesn't mean that enhancements to that public domain software are >also placed in the public domain. If you want to use RMS's original PD >emacs, great, but the stuff gosling did to it he did under copyright, and >you can't use that part of Emacs without permission. Please, if you are going to flame about this issue, get your facts straight. Gosling did not do anything to RMS's original Emacs. Gosling's Emacs contains no code from the original Emacs. The original Emacs is written in TECO for ITS, and later ported to TOPS-20. Gosling's Emacs is written in C for Unix, and later ported to other systems such as VMS (by Unipress?). And in the case of the redisplay, which is getting much of the discussion, RMS's is part of the TECO runtime, written in PDP-10 assembler, not part of EMACS itself. While I will agree that TECO and C are about equal in readability, and PDP-10 assembler and C are about equal levels, that doesn't mean that code can be copied from one language to the other. As far as I know, none of the Emacs clones took anything from RMS' implementation but the user interface paradigm, and often the idea of user extensibility. -- Barry Margolin ARPA: barmar@MIT-Multics UUCP: ..!genrad!mit-eddie!barmar