Xref: utzoo comp.os.mach:35 gnu.misc.discuss:196 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!decwrl!granite.pa.dec.com!mellon From: mellon@zayante.pa.dec.com (Ted Lemon) Newsgroups: comp.os.mach,gnu.misc.discuss Subject: Re: Query: Status of Mach cleanout? Message-ID: Date: 26 Aug 89 01:43:03 GMT References: <12720001@eecs.nwu.edu> <1311000001@upba> Sender: news@decwrl.dec.com Followup-To: gnu.misc.discuss Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation Lines: 29 In-reply-to: mrd@sun.soe.clarkson.edu's message of 25 Aug 89 21:09:46 GMT Michael DeCorte sez, >The result is that I can BUY a version of TeX that will have support. >I can not do that with Gnu Emacs. Nobody can sell it and things tend >to get done fairly slowly if ever. Yes, you can. The difference is that the company that's supporting Emacs for you must give you the source code. This means that if you aren't satisfied with their support, you can fix it yourself. The GNU Public license doesn't forbid you to sell GNU Emacs for whatever price you want. It just forbids you to distribute the binary executable without also making the source available, and it forbids you to restrict the way those to whom you distribute the software may redistribute it. Also, as I and others have pointed out, there's no reason why GNU should be the sole distributor of Mach. If you want to hoard your changes, just use the CMU version of Mach. And if nobody buys your version of Mach because the GNU version is better, than the FSF's point is proven. If everybody flocks to buy your version, you can consider yourself the winner. I've redirected followups to gnu.misc.discuss. I don't think there's any reason to continue this discussion in comp.os.mach, since it seems to be degenerating into a ``Copyleft isn't fair'' vs ``Copyleft is god'' jihad. _MelloN_