Emacs violates GPL since 2009 • Hacker News Board

Re: Emacs violates GPL since 2009

#11

Post by codeup » Fri, Jul 29, 2011, 12:50 PM UTC

julian37 wrote: post #10

codeup wrote: post #7

"We have made a very bad mistake." While I agree with this conclusion and that it needs to be fixed: Wouldn't the irony in the mistake have been a good opportunity to show some sense of humor?

RMS doesn't strike me as a very cheerful person either, at least in email conversations, so it doesn't surprise me you're getting upvoted for this remark. That said, it doesn't surprise me either that as a person known for sticking to his principles he'd take this situation very serious. Also, I think I see what you mean by irony but calling it that would be more appropriate if Stallman himself would have made that p…

I agree with most of your comment.

What I meant isn't that this is funny but ironic because Emacs is the FSF/GPL flagship. That said, I fully understand that RMS is taking this seriously because he wants to sort this out. Maybe he'll make a joke about this one day if it turns out to be a harmless oversight.

Re: Emacs violates GPL since 2009

#12

Post by losvedir » Fri, Jul 29, 2011, 1:01 PM UTC

Cue GOB's "I've made a huge mistake."

As much as RMS gets on my nerves sometimes, I have to admire him here. I feel like his reactions are over the top sometimes, but this shows me that at least they're consistently so -- even when he's the one at fault.

Re: Emacs violates GPL since 2009

#13

Post by codeup » Fri, Jul 29, 2011, 1:01 PM UTC

losvedir wrote: post #12

Cue GOB's "I've made a huge mistake." As much as RMS gets on my nerves sometimes, I have to admire him here. I feel like his reactions are over the top sometimes, but this shows me that at least they're consistently so -- even when he's the one at fault.

How is he the one at fault here?

Re: Emacs violates GPL since 2009

#14

Post by julian37 » Fri, Jul 29, 2011, 1:06 PM UTC

codeup wrote: post #11

julian37 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RMS doesn't strike me as a very cheerful person either, at least in email conversations, so it doesn't surprise me you're getting upvoted for this remark. That said, it doesn't surprise me either that as a person known for sticking to his principles he'd take this situation very serious. Also, I think I see what you mean by irony but calling it that would be more appropriate if Stallman himself would have made that p…

I agree with most of your comment. What I meant isn't that this is funny but ironic because Emacs is the FSF/GPL flagship. That said, I fully understand that RMS is taking this seriously because he wants to sort this out. Maybe he'll make a joke about this one day if it turns out to be a harmless oversight.

I didn't think you were trying to make fun of the issue, but I have to admit that I replied because it bugged me a little that the topmost comment (which your GP comment is as I'm writing this) was about RMS's lack of humour.

I'm not an RMS fanboy, nor a GPL or GNU fanboy for that matter, but I do admire him for being principled and taking a stand in spite of his position becoming less and less popular in the past few years, if I detect the prevailing sentiment correctly. And I'm getting a bit tired of seeing many people taking cracks at his beard, hygiene, lack of humor, etc. instead of taking him up on the specific issues he's raising.

But again, I didn't think you were trying to do that, your lighthearted comment in a prominent position just prompted me to reply.

Cheers!

EDIT: oh, I see now, it's because of the bit about "spoiling a good joke". Sorry, I mainly added that to make it sound a bit less dry and pedantic, nothing worse than that when replying to a comment about lack of humour!

Re: Emacs violates GPL since 2009

#15

Post by modokode » Fri, Jul 29, 2011, 1:07 PM UTC

DasIch wrote: post #9

cpg wrote: post #2

OK, it seems like it may have been an oversight (as in, not to hide anything or subvert someone else). The (over-)reaction by RMS may be a bit too harsh, when a simple README or something might suffice. Every church has to have its pope, though ... Edit: a simple README to point the issue in older tarballs might suffice -- though the issue has to be fixed going forward, no question on that.

The problem here is not just that they are violating the GPL. The problem is that due to the GPL anyone who distributed or distributes one of the affected Emacs versions is violating the GPL. A simple README doesn't solve this issue.

Technically, it's only everyone but GNU that (re)distributes emacs with the generated code that violate GPL, so you are correct in not calling that particular part a problem.

Re: Emacs violates GPL since 2009

#16

Post by rjbond3rd » Fri, Jul 29, 2011, 1:20 PM UTC

julian37 wrote: post #10

codeup wrote: post #7

"We have made a very bad mistake." While I agree with this conclusion and that it needs to be fixed: Wouldn't the irony in the mistake have been a good opportunity to show some sense of humor?

RMS doesn't strike me as a very cheerful person either, at least in email conversations, so it doesn't surprise me you're getting upvoted for this remark. That said, it doesn't surprise me either that as a person known for sticking to his principles he'd take this situation very serious. Also, I think I see what you mean by irony but calling it that would be more appropriate if Stallman himself would have made that p…

> RMS doesn't strike me as a very cheerful person either, at least in email conversations...

Actually, in person, when he's not discussing serious things, he's a very jovial, laid-back chap.

Re: Emacs violates GPL since 2009

#17

Post by jimwise » Fri, Jul 29, 2011, 1:25 PM UTC

In fairness, this is stretching the meaning of `binary blobs' a little, right?

I may be misreading, but the issue is that some of the elisp sources of CEDET were generated from bison input files automatically at some point -- but they're still elisp sources; a user can still modify them if needed, and if an asteroid hits the house of whoever did the original conversion, development can still continue that way.

That doesn't mean that _technically_ we wouldn't be a lot better off if the bison sources made it into the next emacs release, for completeness and ease of future development -- but I'm not sure I see the GPL violation here.

Re: Emacs violates GPL since 2009

#18

Post by rbanffy » Fri, Jul 29, 2011, 1:26 PM UTC

for the tl,dr crowd:

It was noticed a couple parsers included in the source tarball are generated from grammar files that are not. This means they are distributing the compiled version without the corresponding sources (although the parsers are human readable) and that is unacceptable. The situation is analogous to distributing a compiled program without its source or, say, a merged-minified version of a JavaScript library without its original corresponding files.

The solution will be applied retroactively to source tarballs and previous tarballs that did not distribute these source files will be removed.

It's like the Emacs team just noticed the have been driving their car with a broken headlight for the past couple miles.

In the meantime, I seriously doubt many other teams would be so principled as that. Kudos for them.

Re: Emacs violates GPL since 2009

#19

Post by p4bl0 » Fri, Jul 29, 2011, 1:28 PM UTC

losvedir wrote: post #12

Cue GOB's "I've made a huge mistake." As much as RMS gets on my nerves sometimes, I have to admire him here. I feel like his reactions are over the top sometimes, but this shows me that at least they're consistently so -- even when he's the one at fault.

It strikes me that each time there's link on HN or reddit pointing to something RMS said/wrote, there's someone saying this. Always something along the line of "Usually he is overreacting/a dangerous fanatic, but this time I like what he said and how he said it".

Once and for all let's admit that RMS is actually a quite reasonable guy and that when his reactions are "over the top" it is the exception and not the rule. Let's also realize that his "over the top" reactions are due to his role in the FSF and the GNU project. If he is not the one being obsessed by the definition of "free software" versus "open source" then who will be? It's a matter of drawing too hard in one direction so the "forces" compensate and the general direction is as close as possible to what is reasonable.

Re: Emacs violates GPL since 2009

#20

Post by astine » Fri, Jul 29, 2011, 1:30 PM UTC

codeup wrote: post #13

losvedir wrote: post #12

Cue GOB's "I've made a huge mistake." As much as RMS gets on my nerves sometimes, I have to admire him here. I feel like his reactions are over the top sometimes, but this shows me that at least they're consistently so -- even when he's the one at fault.

How is he the one at fault here?

RMS may not be directly responsible for this mishap, but it is his project so he is ultimately responsible for it. He's clearly taking responsibility so good on him I guess.