🚀 go-pugleaf

   Date: 16 Dec 90 10:43:00 GMT
   From: richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk)

	   [QUoting LPD]
	   The copyright that comes with Ghostscript is quite serious:
	   Ghostscript is, in my view, a piece of potentially commercial
	   software that I have developed, that I own, and that I choose
	   to distibute as GNUware.

   Frankly, for me that took a few days to fully sink in.  Peter has
   written Ghostscript and will allow us to use it and debug it for him.
   He reserves the right to turn it into a commercial product once we've
   helped him get it to that point.

   Then what do we have?  A package of what used to be GNUware that we
   are no longer allowed to modify or perhaps even use?

   I understand that anything distributed under a copyright like the GNU
   software can potentially be taken away.

(This is a function of the assignment, not the GPL itself.  All the
ones I've signed or seen indicate that you may take a copy and do with
it what you will, but that the foundation can continue to do with the
versions it has what it will.  But ghostscript is copyright Alladin so
this doesn't apply).

The ghostscript license doesn't allow for termination for any reason
but someone's violation of its terms, but even then non-violating
holders may continue their licenses.

Now LPD may choose to fork off a version at some point; he can issue
software he owns under as many different licences as he wishes.  But:
1> older versions retain the old licence, since it doesn't contain a
   revocation clause, and 
2> He may not be able to take private changes people have sent him if
   they are substantive.  This is why rms asks for an assignment for
   large changes.  It's a CYA clause.

So the worst-case is that there is a fork someday.  I think this
changes the magnitude of the occurrence from "disaster" to merely
"reprehensible".

   My regard for the GNU project has been greatly diminished.  I sincerely
   hope someone will restore some order to the world.

I hope you do not tar rms nor the GNU project with the same brush you
would use on lpd (though it does say "I, Richard Stallman" in the
Ghostscript GPL).