Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 148 posts

Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#111

Post by strenholme »

bbanyc wrote: post #106
strenholme wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only started to be true in 1988, when the US adopted the Berne Convention with its copyright law. In 1981 or 1983, anything without an explicit copyright declaration was considered public domain.

I'm looking at the Gosmacs source right now, and just above the skull-and-bones warning it says "Copyright (c) 1981,1980 James Gosling" If nothing else, Gosling had a valid copyright. Mind you, there were no license terms on any file and it was distributed as source code.

Since Gosling never initiated legal proceedings against RMS, and since the statute of limitations for copyright is three to five years [1], the issue is moot today.

[1] https://law.freeadvice.com/intellectual_property/copyright_l...

Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#112

Post by trn »

kragen wrote: post #62
trn wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multics Emacs was the second Emacs to be implemented in Lisp, not the first. The first was Lisp Machine Emacs, known as EINE, (EINE Is Not Emacs) from 1977, while Multics Emacs is from 1978. (See also rms’ acknowledgement in the footnotes of the transcript of his speech to the International Lisp Conference of 28-OCT-2002.)

Thank you for the corrections!

I got it wrong too, when I answered a similar question, referencing rms' original speech. Unfortunately, his correction didn't seem to spread as far or as quickly as the original quote.

Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#114

Post by hinkley »

Sniffnoy wrote: post #69
AlexCoventry wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Cache, since jwz is re-directing that link, now. :-) https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:G9nZNd...

It's not him redirecting that link; he redirects all links from HN by checking the Referer. If you copy and paste the URL it works fine.

Why did we piss him off? I don't think I ever heard that story.

Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#115

Post by hinkley »

Isamu wrote: post #29
tjr wrote: post #20

From a 2002 Stallman lecture: There was no free software Emacs editor that ran on Unix. I did, however, have a friend who had participated in developing Gosling's Emacs. Gosling had given him, by email, permission to distribute his own version. He proposed to me that I use that version. Then I discovered that Gosling's Emacs did not have a real Lisp. It had a programming language that was known as ‘mocklisp’, which l…

>I concluded I couldn't use it and had to replace it all Which happened over time. He used it as a starting point, replaced some important parts first and gradually rewrote everything. This took some time. Meanwhile the partial rewrite was being distributed. It's not a black-and-white story of theft versus clean rewrite. Also I don't recall Gosling Emacs having any license terms included with the code ... and I studi…

Very early in my career when I was trying to figure this stuff out, I learned (from the mistakes of others) that using someone else's code as scaffolding affords you absolutely no protection in a civil case.

If you want to copy someone's application you have to do it separately, and not only that, you can't look at the old code. That's where the whole idea of Clean Room implementation came from. One party had to 'taint' themselves by reading the code and converting it into a requirements document, and another party implements the requirements without ever reading the code.

Things get a bit fuzzier around compilation units. If you write your code as an add-on or a DLL you might be able to walk away from it. Might.

Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#116

Post by Ill_ban_myself »

sp332 wrote: post #7
wiz21c wrote: post #4

Ouch, that's no small claim. I was just learning emacs because it's GPL... But if it was stolen then, well, that's an entirely different story... What about the other tools Stallman wrote ?

Well it's big in a gossip sense, but what's actually going to change?

history. and that's a big deal.

Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#117

Post by catalogia »

senderista wrote: post #110
catalogia wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never saw nor heard of that rule being applied against developers using Emacs. And of course there wouldn't be a special excemption for Linux; Linux wouldn't need to be exempted from a ban on a license it doesn't have.

I'm not sure how much it was enforced, but apparently unlike you, I took the time to read the Open Source Policy, and I stand by what I wrote as of 2014. Why don't you do the same before you downvote? PS Why don't you check which version of GCC is currently used in Brazil? It was years out of date when I was there for the reasons I described. PPS I was wrong about Linux being licensed under GPLv3: it is GPLv2. I apol…

I know what the rule said. What I never heard of was anybody actually caring about developers using emacs. I do not presently work there.

PS 'green' users can't downvote.

Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#118

Post by bbanyc »

hinkley wrote: post #114
Sniffnoy wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not him redirecting that link; he redirects all links from HN by checking the Referer. If you copy and paste the URL it works fine.

Why did we piss him off? I don't think I ever heard that story.

I don't think there's a story, he just hates the VC/startup scene for exploiting workers and ruining San Francisco. And he's not wrong.

Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#119

Post by wbl »

bbanyc wrote: post #118
hinkley wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did we piss him off? I don't think I ever heard that story.

I don't think there's a story, he just hates the VC/startup scene for exploiting workers and ruining San Francisco. And he's not wrong.

NIMBYS ruined SF. It has Peter Pan syndrome instead of being the greatest most modern city in America.

Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#120

Post by lispm »

kragen wrote: post #34
lliamander wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gosling had given him, by email, permission to distribute his own version. He proposed to me that I use that version. It's important here to note that Stallman does not claim it was his own brainchild, and did give Gosling credit. However, from I understand, the email that Stallman claims gave said permissions does not exist (or at least could not be found) and I'm not sure that Stallman's friend confirmed Stallman…

Fen Labalme did confirm Stallman's claim, but could not find the email; remember this is in the days of backups on 9-track tapes, and he was looking for an email he had presumably deleted several years earlier. > It's important here to note that Stallman does not claim it was his own brainchild, and did give Gosling credit. This is true in a very limited way, but by itself it is a very misleading partial truth. Stall…

https://github.com/ArchMach/Sine/blob/master/papers/thesis.p...

SINE

Post reply on HN