Re: Legal questions about some GNU Emacs files
Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> writes:
> distributed in the same package. If you look at the Debian History
> package, you'll find the statement that `The Debian Project was
> officially founded by Ian Murdock on August 16th, 1993.', which
> stands in interesting contrast to WHY-FREE's `Copyright 1994 Richard
> Stallman'.
the only problem is there was no social contract when the debian
project was founded. if you bothered to actually read the social
contract all the way to the end it says:
Bruce Perens wrote the first draft of this document and refined it
using the comments of the Debian developers during a month-long
e-mail conference in June 1997. He later removed the Debian-specific
references from the Debian Free Software Guidelines to create "The
Open Source Definition".
which is some four years later. at any rate the ideas advocated by rms
in WHY-FREE were around as far back as 1986 (when i started using
various gnu programs) and i am sure for some time before that as well
(the GNU file has a 1985 copyright on it and it looks like the
precursor of WHY-FREE). so no, debian didn't come up with the idea of
free software.
--alex--
--
| I believe the moment is at hand when, by a paranoiac and active |
| advance of the mind, it will be possible (simultaneously with |
| automatism and other passive states) to systematize confusion |
| and thus to help to discredit completely the world of reality. |
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