Re: beamer, pdflatex and auctex

[David Kastrup]

Dieter Wilhelm <dieter@duenenhof-wilhelm.de> writes:

> There is an Emacs mode out there for the Finite Element Analysis (FEA)
> program Ansys, the file is  called ansys-mode.el and there it's
> written:
>
> ;;; Copyright (C) 1997 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
>
> ;; Author: Tim Read <Tim.Read@fp.co.nz>
> ;; Author: Geoff Foster <fosterg@fp.co.nz>
> ;; Maintainer: Tim Read <Tim.Read@fp.co.nz>
>
> So it looks to me that they at least intended to give the copyright
> to the FSF.

Not necessarily.  They could have copied some original file from which
they started.  Whatever they intended, without them giving the FSF a
legally binding assignment and the FSF _accepting_ the copyright, this
comment is simply wrong.

But the question is whether it makes a difference to you.  It would if
you wanted to contribute the code you develop from there back to the
FSF, or if you trust the FSF to behave more reasonably about license
enforcement than the authors.

But other than that, you can hardly be expected to carry out diligent
research about what the above listed authors actually did in regard of
paperwork or not.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum