Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2011/07/29/emacs.html
fabsh was the first to
point me at a
slashdot
story that is (like most slashdot stories) sensationalized.
The story, IMO, makes the usual mistake of considering a
GPL violation as an
earth-shattering disaster that has breached the future of software
freedom. GPL
violations vary in degree of the problems they create; most aren’t
earth-shattering.
Specifically, the slashdot story points
to a
thread on the emacs-devel mailing list about a failure to include
some needed bison grammar in the complete and corresponding sources
for Emacs in a few
Emacs releases in the last year or two. As you can see there,
RMS quickly
responded to
call it a grave problem … [both] legally and
, and
ethically
he’s asked
the Emacs developers to help clear up the problem quickly.
I wrote nearly two years ago
that one
shouldn’t jump to conclusions and start condemning those who violate the
GPL without investigating further first. Most GPL violations are
mistakes, as this situation clearly was, and I suspect
it will be resolved within a few news cycles of this blog post.
And please, while we all see the snickering-inducing irony of
FSF and its
GNU project violating the GPL, keep in
mind that this is what I’ve typically called a “community
violation”. It’s a non-profit volunteer project that made an
honest mistake and is resolving it quickly. Meanwhile, I’ve a list of
hundreds of companies who are actively violating the GPL, ignoring users
who requested source, and have apparently no interest in doing the right
thing until I open an enforcement action against them. So, please keep
perspective about what how bad any given violation is. Not all GPL
violations are of equal gravity, but all should be resolved, of course.
The Emacs developers are on it.
