Re: Icon designer wanted (Aquamacs Emacs)

[David Kastrup]

Joe Bush <bushj004@hawaii.rr.com> writes:

> David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> Sure.  A bunch of baloney filtered through usability labs might still
>> be a bunch of baloney.  I was just talking about
>> "established/fledgling", and that is, free or nonfree, a difficult
>> position to start with.  Lots of free software has been able to pull
>> this off because of the single advantage of being free.
>
> Yes. I also agree that the idea of "Let's just do it, and try to
> get legal papers for it later" has no place in free software.

Oh, not at all.  The whole point of free software is to be able to do
stuff without having to worry about lawyers and stuff.  The copyright
assignments are not about freedom, but about its outward defense in an
unfree world.

The FSF can't afford to lose a copyright lawsuit over its software.
And that means that it must track its sources meticulously and make
sure that it keeps in control of them, at least the strategic assets
(there is GNU software that does not require assignments.  It depends
on how important it is to the FSF to be able to prevail in court, both
as defendant and as plaintiff, and how much stands at risk).

> Any software however trivial, which purports to be free, but which
> cannot trace it's pedigree completely provides a handle that a
> copy-rite attorney could use to throw the whole FSF into
> question. Doesn't matter if the rest of the software's clean. The
> case could simply be litigated to the point of bankruptcy for the
> FSF.

Yes.  The current SCO/IBM lawsuit shows how deep your pockets need to
be if you want to survive even a rather frivolous lawsuit centered
about distributed and hard to trace copyrights.

> Here's a question: Why hasn't Apple itself 'prettied-up' Emacs? It's
> not like they have neither the time, nor the ability to do so. I
> seem to recall (though I could be wrong) that OSX itself is a
> 'prettied-up' HMI wrapper around BSD.

But BSD is licensed differently.  But you also have to be realistic:
Emacs does not meet _any_ interface guide criteria.  Just look at
keybindings and internationalization.  Putting Emacs in your corporate
policies is like splicing carrot and alligator genes in order to get
more resilient crops.  In the unlikely case that you'll succeed, come
harvest time you'll look at a field of snarling roots that clutch and
wonder what got into you.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum