From: jbw@bigbird.bu.edu (Joe Wells)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.emacs
Subject: Re: lighter fluid
Date: 10 Nov 92 06:42:57 GMT
 BwunFC.MCH.1@cs.cmu.edu> <1d4dd7INN235@agate.berkeley.edu>
Organization: Boston University Computer Science Department
In-reply-to: jym@mica.berkeley.edu's message of 2 Nov 92 23:25:27 GMT

In article <1d4dd7INN235@agate.berkeley.edu> jym@mica.berkeley.edu writes:

   In article <BwunFC.MCH.1@cs.cmu.edu> hopkins@cs.cmu.edu (Don Hopkins) writes:

   > Gnu Emacs was originally based on parts of Gosling Emacs (with its
   > own plywood lisp interpreter) but by now all the Gosling C code has
   > been rewritten.

   =/= GNU Emacs wasn't based on parts of Gosling Emacs, it just used some
   of its screen updating code.

Time for your history lesson, Jym.  RMS explains in
<9010222332.AA11131@mole.ai.mit.edu> how GNU Emacs was derived directly
from Gosling Emacs:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
In 1980 or so, Gosling started writing his imitation of the original
Emacs that I had done.  In his first manual, he appealed for the users
to help improve the program to make it "worthy of the name" of Emacs.
In this, he was acting in the same spirit as the GNU project; but in
those days, the old tradition was not entirely forgotten, and this was
not an unusual thing to do.

Fen Labalme was one of these users who started contributing code.
When a new version appeared with copyright notices, he asked what was
up.  Gosling told him that the copyrights were to prevent anyone else
from selling it and that Fen could distribute it anyway.

In 1984, after Gosling sold out to Unipress, Fen gave me a copy of his
modified version.  Originally I was simply going to distribute this
editor on Fen's behalf, after making the user-level commands
compatible with the ones I knew.  However, when I tried to do that, I
found that the lack of a real Lisp interpreter made programming
unpleasant.  So I replaced the programming language, and then replaced
most of the rest by redesigning it to use Lisp data structures, first
class objects, and so on.  By 1985, only part of the display code
remained of what I had received with Gosling's copyright.

Then Unipress started claiming that Fen did not have permission to use
Gosmacs, and therefore neither did I.  Unfortunately, Fen had not
saved the message from Gosling giving him permission.  To eliminate
this problem, I rewrote the display code.  A few weeks later, Unipress
made the announcement on net.emacs saying they had no further
complaint.  That is the last I have heard from Unipress on the
subject, and I thought the issue was closed.

Then, this spring, I heard about the letter IBM had received.  After
comparing the source files, our lawyer said Unipress does not have a
basis for a claim, because the similarities are too small.  However,
in an attempt to eliminate all possible uncertainty, I rewrote any
piece of code I could find that seemed similar to part of Gosmacs.
(Of course, many algorithms remain similar, but copyright does not
cover that.)  I also replaced some code originally written by Fen,
since this seemed more clear-cut than disputing who wrote it.  I hoped
by this to convince IBM to go ahead and distribute GNU Emacs.
However, their attitude was that even an extremely small chance of
trouble was too much.  They said that people are prejudiced against
them and that they can lose totally unreasonable lawsuits.

Regardless, I will be putting this new version into pre-test soon.

I think that my actions throughout have been ethical both by my
principles and by those of the establishment, first in using a program
which I believed I had legal permission to use, and then (in 1985)
eliminating that code when I found out I could not substantiate the
permission.  However, it seems to have been an unwise decision to
start with Gosmacs at all.  Since then I have been careful to get
written permission for all the code that I use in GNU software.
However, it's too late for me to change past mistakes.  Luckily, it
seems that this one is not likely to cause real trouble for anyone
with as much guts as a daffodil.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Eventually, all the code from Gosling Emacs was ripped out and replaced,
but it was done piece by piece.

-- 
Joe Wells <jbw@cs.bu.edu>
Member of the League for Programming Freedom --- send e-mail for details

  "I will defend to your death my right to my opinion."
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