Re: Basic legal question: Publication of a fix to psgml

[Florian v. Savigny]

Thanks to everybody for the clear answers!

Andreas, although I know I might be risking to lengthen this
needlessly, I would like to confirm what the others said: I did merely
ask whether I can publish it, and I am completely happy with the
answer.

Although, as may be guessed, I do understand, and even share, your
motive - keeping great software that was written for everybody
available to everybody -, I do not see how the ELPA copyright policy
hinders that in any way. Lots of elisp packages are not on ELPA, but
that does not preclude distributing and using them, or making them
known. The fact that psgml has not been available in a usable form for
some time now even though a fix has been in place for some time is
simply due to my not asking about how to publish it, not to the ELPA
copyright requirements. I don't think anything will keep me from
announcing this fix publicly enough.

FWIW, my gut feeling is that the Emacs people have a good reason for
their requirements. Emacs has always been a very conservative piece of
software, and to me, this is indeed part of what makes it so
exciting. There might be a downside to this, but there always is,
isn't there?

(Actually, I think the fundamental, well, problem with psgml is
actually that it does not seem to have a maintainer anymore. If it
had, the question would not have occurred at all, I presume.)

Best regards,

Florian