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From: ralph@ralmar.UUCP (Ralph Barker)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: COPYRIGHT NOTICES (on program sources, of course)
Message-ID: <414@ralmar.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Aug-87 21:39:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: ralmar.414
Posted: Thu Aug 27 21:39:04 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 30-Aug-87 01:23:31 EDT
References: <6236@brl-smoke.ARPA> <25095@sun.uucp> <12133@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <2267@xanth.UUCP>
Organization: ralmar
Lines: 27
Summary: Part of GNU=yes, Not GNU=no (???)

In article <2267@xanth.UUCP>, kyle@xanth.UUCP (Kyle Jones) writes:
> In article <357@mcdsun.UUCP> fnf@mcdsun.UUCP (Fred Fish) writes:
> .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .  I gave a copy of the "COPYING"
> > file to our lawyer, who studied it in some detail and then pronounced
> > that if we included it, it would require us to give away the source
> > to ALL of Uniplus+.  I thought he was slightly daffy, but .....
> 
> Amazing, especially since Berkeley distributed GNU Emacs with 4.3 BSD.
> 
> I have to agree: Section 2b of the GNU Public License seem to imply that
> the terms of the License must spread to cover other software that GNU is
> distributed with.  I suppose only time and litigation will bear this out.

In describing his "Copyleft" at a recent SVNet (a San Francisco Bay Area
UNIX User's Group) meeting, Richard Stallman seemed to indicate that the
"spreading" effect of the GNU "Copyleft" would apply to software of which
GNU Emacs was made an integral part by the distributor, but NOT to programs
which "a reasonable" person would deem to be a separate, functional work.
I took his explanation to mean that if your program worked without Emacs,
i.e. "on its own", then you could copyright it.  Or, conversely, if your
program REQUIRED GNU Emacs in order to function, then you would have to
"Copyleft" it.  (Is "Copyleft" a copyrighted term?):-)

-- 
Ralph Barker, RALMAR Business Systems, 640 So Winchester Blvd, San Jose,CA 95128
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