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Williams, Sam

"Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software"

0, the last significant pre-GNU Project
upgrade of Emacs. "I had seen email messages with
copyright notices plus simple `verbatim copying
permitted' licenses," Stallman recalls. "Those
definitely were [an] inspiration."
For Emacs 15, Stallman drafted a copyright that gave
users the right to make and distribute copies. It also
gave users the right to make modified versions, but not
the right to claim sole ownership of those modified
versions, as in the case of GOSMACS.
Although helpful in codifying the social contract of
the Emacs Commune, the Emacs 15 license remained too
"informal" for the purposes of the GNU Project,
Stallman says. Soon after starting work on a GNU
version of Emacs, Stallman began consulting with the
other members of the Free Software Foundation on how to
shore up the license's language. He also consulted with
the attorneys who had helped him set up the Free
Software Foundation.
Mark Fischer, a Boston attorney specializing in
intellectual-property law, recalls discussing the
license with Stallman during this period.


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