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From: jr@bbn.com (John Robinson)
Newsgroups: gnu.emacs,comp.emacs
Subject: Re: RMAIL file ---> UNIX mail file
Message-ID: <36071@bbn.COM>
Date: 16 Feb 89 07:31:59 GMT
References: <425@talos.UUCP> <69658@ti-csl.csc.ti.com> <434@talos.UUCP> <36061@bbn.COM>
Sender: news@bbn.COM
Reply-To: jr@bbn.com (John Robinson)
Organization: BBN Systems and Technologies Corporation, Cambridge MA
Lines: 19
In-reply-to: jr@bbn.com (John Robinson)

In article <36061@bbn.COM>, I write:
>Emacs started with no rmail code, but it was easy to steal it from
>elsewhere, namely the existing implementation on some random lisp
>machine, which happened to be using Babyl format.

Now that was a pretty lousy way to say that.  I meant that the Babyl
structure for a file of messages had been kicking around for
quite a while, including on lisp machines and others, and it was
certainly a method that the GNU emacs builders were familiar with, so
it was a natural choice to implement for GNU emacs.  I did not mean to
imply anything sinister about the origins of the actual code in
rmail.el.

Given the FSF's public stance on how software ought to be distributed,
I am sure that they are in fact extra scrupulous about what they
choose to call their own.
--
/jr
jr@bbn.com or bbn!jr