"Richard had
very strong views about how it should work," Fischer
says, "He had two principles. The first was to make the
software absolutely as open as possible. The second was
to encourage others to adopt the same licensing practices."
Encouraging others to adopt the same licensing
practices meant closing off the escape hatch that had
allowed privately owned versions of Emacs to emerge. To
close that escape hatch, Stallman and his free software
colleagues came up with a solution: users would be free
to modify GNU Emacs just so long as they published
their modifications. In addition, the resulting
"derivative" works would also have carry the same GNU
Emacs License.
The revolutionary nature of this final condition would
take a while to sink in. At the time, Fischer says, he
simply viewed the GNU Emacs License as a simple
contract. It put a price tag on GNU Emacs' use. Instead
of money, Stallman was charging users access to their
own later modifications. That said, Fischer does
remember the contract terms as unique.
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