When Symbolics executives noticed that their
latest features were still appearing in the AI Lab Lisp
Machine and, by extension, the LMI Lisp machine, they
installed a "spy" program on Stallman's computer
terminal. Stallman says he was rewriting the features
from scratch, taking advantage of the license's review
clause but also taking pains to make the source code as
different as possible. Symbolics executives argued
otherwise and took their case to MIT administration.
According to 1994 book, The Brain Makers: Genius, Ego,
and Greed, and the Quest for Machines That Think,
written by Harvey Newquist, the administration
responded with a warning to Stallman to "stay away"
from the Lisp Machine project.Ibid.: 196. According to Stallman,
MIT administrators backed Stallman up. "I was never
threatened," he says. "I did make changes in my
practices, though. Just to be ultra safe, I no longer
read their source code. I used only the documentation
and wrote the code from that."
Whatever the outcome, the bickering solidified
Stallman's resolve.
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