Is XEmacs nonfree?
[I searched the archives, but didn't find a previous discussion
about this; if I missed it, please just point me in the right
direction. Thanks.]
I've been using both XEmacs(20) and Emacs(20), and while investigating
some of their differences in behavior I stumbled upon
http://www.xemacs.org/About/XEmacsVsGNUemacs.html
which quotes RMS as having written (no date was specified):
...
But in another sense it is not GNU software, because we can't use
XEmacs in the GNU system: using it would mean paying a price in
terms of our ability to enforce the GPL. Some of the people who have
worked on XEmacs have not provided, and have not asked other
contributors to provide, the legal papers to help us enforce the
GPL. I have managed to get legal papers for some parts myself, but
most of the XEmacs developers have not helped me get them.
...
But this is worse than competition--it is unfair competition. The
XEmacs developers can and do copy code they like from Emacs. If I
could copy the code I like from XEmacs in the same way, at least the
rivalry would be fair. But I can't do that't, because substantial
parts of XEmacs don't have legal papers, or don't have known
authors.
...
Is that still an accurate description of the legal status (from
FSF's perspective) of XEmacs, and if so, shouldn't we move it to
non-free?
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