Re: python.el

[Glenn Morris]

Dave Love wrote:

> I explained it to rms, but he wouldn't do anything bug reports
> without patches.

I can't parse this.

> I doubt anyone else can say anything useful unless they're privy to
> legal advice, but I haven't been asked for details. Why are you
> querying this? Can you give legal advice?

I queried this because you sent it to the emacs-pretest-bug mailing
list, which is not rms's personal mail account, and I had no clue what
you meant, nor could I find anything in the list archives. I got the
impression your email was for a specific target, hence the first
sentence of my reply. Since rms often takes a day or so to reply, I
hoped to speed things along my getting more info. I cannot give legal
advice.

> There are potential problems due to my previous employer with things
> I wrote until I left in April 2006. I'm contractually obliged to
> inform the FSF about that, whether or not I consider it spurious or
> actually care about GNU.

I for one am grateful to you for informing us.

>> The python.el in CVS Emacs is the one you submitted to
>> gnu-emacs-sources here:
>
> ?? It's clearly substantially different.  The original surely won't
> even work in the development Emacs.

My intended meaning was "in CVS Emacs is [derived from] the one..."

>> Another fix:
>> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-pretest-bug/2005-03/msg00441.html
>
> How could that be a copyright issue?  I didn't supply any code, on
> purpose.

I had no idea what your point was, so I just dredged up all
discussions about python.el, in an attempt to speed things along.

> There's a changelog entry from then with my name on it, but it isn't
> mine, which should be a concern anyway. Some or all of that addition
> is problematic and I haven't checked any subsequent changes. I'm
> asking why it and anything else was grabbed and put in without
> consulting me and whether it's clear there's no problem.

It was installed by Stefan. I can't speak for him, but I imagine since
he's the person who installed your python.el initially, and subsequent
fixes from you, that he got the impression that there was no problem
installing updates from your version (which I guess is on the web
somewhere?).

> (It's pretty annoying to have the code forked and then have people
> complain to me about bugs, but I'm sure I won't get anywhere on that.)

I'm sorry if people complain to you about bugs that aren't your fault.
There is nothing in the python.el in CVS Emacs that says bug reports
should be sent to you. It lists maintainer as "FSF".

>> There are two long threads about python.el from August 2006 that start
>> here and here:
>> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2006-08/msg00353.html
>> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2006-08/msg00758.html
>
> I haven't read them; are they relevant?

Probably not. I guess these discussions might be what prompted Stefan
to check for updates to your python.el.

> However, my original compilation mode support was broken by
> subsequently changes in the development Emacs, and I gave up trying
> to track the general breakage to python.el some time ago. Perhaps it
> no longer works, unlike the Emacs 21 version I use. Anyhow, that's a
> side issue that I don't suppose people are interested in hearing
> about.

If something in Emacs does not work, bug reports about it are welcome.
If changes in some part of Emacs break another, that's bad, but it
can't be fixed if no-one mentions it.


Anyway, back to the topic at hand: there's a potential legal problem
with python.el. Is all the code you wrote for python.el affected, or
just the 2006-08-20 changes? Before that, there are no changes from
python.el from you until we get to 2004-12-02.

If it's just the 2006-08-20 stuff: Stefan, is there anyway this can
easily be removed and still leave a working python.el? Dave, would
that be acceptable to you?

Otherwise, our only recourse AFAICS is to remove python.el before the
(imminent) release of Emacs 22.