Toward a "modern" Emacs [LWN.net]

Toward a "modern" Emacs

Posted Sep 26, 2020 4:21 UTC (Sat) by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418)
In reply to: Toward a "modern" Emacs by cmonsanto
Parent article: Toward a "modern" Emacs

Microsoft and apple have both made moves to make their app stores on the desktop be like the iphone and restrict applications beyond what gplv3 allows. They have enough legal resources to avoid violating in the first place. The fact that there are popular gplv3 desktop applications like emacs and gimp and others, along with FSF having the resources do the legal work to ensure compliance, I'd bet has and will be a deterrent from microsoft and apple restricting freedoms on those oses.

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Toward a "modern" Emacs

Posted Sep 26, 2020 5:03 UTC (Sat) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (2 responses)

The underestimated power of emacs and gimp stopping Microsoft from locking down Windows 10S, wow! What next, newer editors deliberately choosing copy/paste shortcuts different from Emacs?

More seriously: many companies do try to avoid the GPL as much as they can and the GPLv3 even more. However there's zero evidence that they care about who holds the copyright. Imagine a legal department having the time and resource to "profile" open source copyright authors...

Toward a "modern" Emacs

Posted Sep 26, 2020 6:35 UTC (Sat) by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418) [Link] (1 responses)

> there's zero evidence that they care about who holds the copyright. Imagine a legal department having the time and resource to "profile" open source copyright authors.

There is a long history and plenty of evidence regarding FSF and MS legal department.

Toward a "modern" Emacs

Posted Sep 26, 2020 17:01 UTC (Sat) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

Again, thanks for correcting me... with at least one reference which should be very easy to provide considering "long" and "plenty".

To be clear: did Microsoft struggle with the FSF in the past? I bet. Did Microsoft have rules to deal with open source or the GPL? Yes of course. Still has, just like any other software company. What I assumed and meant is: Microsoft Legal never explicitly instructed its employees to deal with "FSF software" differently from any other GPL software.