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From: jqj@cornell.UUCP (J Q Johnson)
Newsgroups: net.emacs
Subject: Re: "Gosling-free" emacs and unipress
Message-ID: <3232@cornell.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 18-Jul-85 07:26:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: cornell.3232
Posted: Thu Jul 18 07:26:03 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Jul-85 02:28:29 EDT
References: <3134@decwrl.UUCP>
Reply-To: jqj@gvax.UUCP (J Q Johnson)
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept.
Lines: 22

In article <3134@decwrl.UUCP> kolling@decwrl.UUCP (Karen Kolling) writes:
>
>    Unipress told me that they . . . are
>"reserving the right to sue if people use this version, because Stallman
>wrote it looking at Gosling's code."

Note that copyright law provides NO protection for the algorithms or ideas
contained in a block of code, but only for the instantiation.  Thus, the
fact that RMS looked at any copyrighted code is totally irrelevant; the only
question is whether any of code (possibly modified by some mechanical
translation process like reformatting or identifier substitution) from the
Gosling version and not available from any public domain source was included.
Trade secrets are different, of course, but noone has claimed trade secret 
protection for the Gosling code.

Given the legal problems that have come up in this discussion, I am very
leary of purchasing ANY programs from Unipress or James Gosling, for fear of
future legal action based on claims that I have illegally incorporated
code from the packages I bought in other software developed here.  Whether
such action would succeed in court is irrelevant since I want to avoid the
hassles.  If other sites feel as I do, the whole issue could result in a 
substantial loss of business for Unipress.