*BSD News Article 14929


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From: imp@boulder.parcplace.com (Warner Losh)
Subject: Re: Summary of Linux vs. 386BSD vs. Commercial Unixes
Message-ID: <C5p9sC.15o@boulder.parcplace.com>
Sender: news@boulder.parcplace.com
Organization: ParcPlace Boulder
References: <1993Apr17.190517.4276@serval.net.wsu.edu> <1993Apr17.205715.11278@coe.montana.edu> <1993Apr17.231000.103368@zeus.calpoly.edu>
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1993 22:14:35 GMT
Lines: 24

In article <1993Apr17.231000.103368@zeus.calpoly.edu>
jemenake@trumpet.calpoly.edu (Joe Emenaker) writes: 
>Apparently the guy who wrote Emacs released it into the public domain.
>He made it completely redistributable. As the story was told to me, DEC
>Corporation saw Emacs and liked it and decided that they were going to
>take it. I don't recall if they just started selling it or if they
>somehow "assumed" the rights of emacs. This pissed the guy off... who
>decided he was going to write a NEW or "GNU" version of emacs and was
>going to reserve the rights just enough so that nobody else could claim
>the rights to it.

Please check with this reality when posting about the history of gnu
Emacs.  The above is totally bogus and demonstrates a complete lack of
knowledge of what really went down.  I'm not qualified to give a blow
by blow on the history of Emacs, but I do know that this never
happened.

Warner

P.S.  It did happen with another program, but I don't recall the name,
so I won't engage in speculation.
-- 
Warner Losh		imp@boulder.parcplace.COM	ParcPlace Boulder
I've almost finished my brute force solution to subtlety.