Determined to build GNU Emacs on a similar
Lisp foundation, Stallman borrowed copiously from
Gosling's innovations. Although Gosling had put GOSMACS
under copyright and had sold the rights to UniPress, a
privately held software company, Stallman cited the
assurances of a fellow developer who had participated
in the early MOCKLISP interpreter. According to the
developer, Gosling, while a Ph.D. student at Carnegie
Mellon, had assured early collaborators that their work
would remain accessible. When UniPress caught wind of
Stallman's project, however, the company threatened to
enforce the copyright. Once again, Stallman faced the
prospect of building from the ground up.
In the course of reverse-engineering Gosling's
interpreter, Stallman would create a fully functional
Lisp interpreter, rendering the need for Gosling's
original interpreter moot. Nevertheless, the notion of
developers selling off software rights-indeed, the very
notion of developers having software rights to sell in
the first place-rankled Stallman.
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