Subject: Re: Pine tutorial in French

From: Guy BRAND <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 08 May 1996 16:12:47 +0200

Roger Merat wrote:
 
> Does someone know about a pine tutorial written in French ?

  Hi,

  I had a french version of Pine (not pretty enough to give it out), but
I'm planning to translate version 3.93 too if enough people would be
interested. GNU's administrators are looking for localized versions of
GNU licenced programs (according to GNU Bulletin), but I just did the
translation for some students in France. I'd be glad if someone would be
interested in the program itself too. Hope it's not already done :-)

  Unfortunately I have no plan on the tutorial and docs, but the both
things should be done accordingly to be efficient and clean.

  IMHO
  BuG

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      ====      Guy BRAND - mailto:[email-masked]
    =---====    http://wwwchimie.u-strasbg.fr/membres/GB/GB.html
   =-----====   
   ==---=====                University of Geneva
    ========                  
      ====                        @}--`--,---
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From: [email-masked] (Roger Merat)
Date: 8 May 96 09:40:49 +0200

Roger Merat             [email-masked]
  University of Geneva    c=ch/admd=400net/prmd=switch/o=unige/ou=uni2a/s=merat
  Switzerland             tel: +4122/7057691      fax: +4122/7057986

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From: [email-masked] (Egil Kvaleberg)
Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 03:29:31 GMT

Guy BRAND ([email-masked]) wrote:
> interested.

Since version 3.92, you are only permitted to do local modifications to
Pine. So you'll need to get an explicit permission from U of Washington
to get permission to distribute such a version.

> GNU's administrators are looking for localized versions of
> translation for some students in France.

FYI: Pine since version 3.92 is definitely not a GNU licenced program.
The last free Pine is version 3.91.

Egil
--
Email: [email-masked]  Voice: +47 22523641, 92022780 Fax: +47 22525899
Snail: Egil Kvaleberg, Husebybakken 14A, 0379 Oslo, Norway
URL:   http://www.sn.no/home/egilk/

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From: Terry Gray <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 12:15:00 -0700 (PDT)

> The last free Pine is version 3.91.

Egil,
Be careful...

It's true that 3.92 is "definitely not a GNU licenced program"... but in
fact, *no* version of Pine has *ever* been distributed by us under a GNU
license.  Nor could anyone else reasonably distribute a derivative work
under GPL since our copyright has always required inclusion of permission
statements that conflict with GPL.  That's been true since day one. 

Your statement "The last free pine is version 3.91" is subject to 
considerable debate... It depends a lot on what you mean by "free".
Consider:
 o No version of Pine has ever been completely free of conditions, 
   as in "public domain".
 o No version of Pine has ever been (so-called) "free" in the GNU 
   Public License sense, since none of the GPL restrictions have ever
   been asserted.
 o No version of Pine has ever been anything *other* than free in the
   sense that anyone can compile and execute Pine/Pico/Pilot for any
   purpose without paying anything to UW.

Cheers,

-teg

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From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 17:27:11 -0700

Egil Kvaleberg's statement (reproduced below) is not true, Richard
Stallman's rhetoric notwithstanding.

Anyone can modify any version of Pine.  We request that anyone doing such
modifications also modify the version number by appending an "L" suffix
(e.g. "3.93" would become "3.93L") so that when we get bug reports, we
know that it is from a modified version of Pine.  Any entity, except a
for-profit entity, can distribute any version of Pine. 

Any for-profit entity that wishes to distribute Pine must ask permission
from the University of Washington.  In other words, if Microsoft wishes to
produce Microsoft Pine for Windows, they need to talk to UW's lawyers. 
The issue here is that if UW does not protect the "Pine" name, it will
lose its rights to that name.  It's possible that UW may issue blanket
permission for such things as freeware CD-ROM distributions of unmodified
Pine. 

Unlike GNU, there is no requirement about source distribution.  GNU tries
to dictate your morality.  We do not.  Nor have we ever, to date, refused
permission to anyone who asks.

Personally, I find GNU's "copyleft" to be much more restrictive; it
prevents anyone from using software under the "copyleft" in a proprietary
program.  This is why the IMAP toolkit is not under the "copyleft" either. 
[The IMAP toolkit does not have any distribution restrictions at all;
for-profit organizations are encouraged to make unlimited use of it.]

Since Mr. Brand seems to be at a university, there should be no problem
with his distributing a French translation of Pine.  We would appreciate
receiving a copy of his modifications, so that we can incorporate them
into future versions.  But he's under no obligation to do so. 

> The last free Pine is version 3.91.

-- Mark --

DoD #0105, R90/6 pilot, FAX: (206) 685-4045  ICBM: N 47 39'35" W 122 18'39"
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.

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From: Egil Kvaleberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 15:04:08 +0200 (MET DST)

On Mon, 13 May 1996, Terry Gray wrote:

> license.

I've never claimed that, either. As we all know, the GNU license is more
restrictive than e.g. Pine 3.91 in order to ensure that the software
remains *free*. A scheme without such restrictions, like the one used for
Pine 3.91, has some built in dangers that others may impose severe
restrictions on derived works. 

> Nor could anyone else reasonably distribute a derivative work
> statements that conflict with GPL.

I definitely think not. The only restriction you have imposed on the Pine
3.91 software is that the U of W copyright notice remains intact, and the
the name U of W is not used for advertising. Other that that, the software
can be used for *any purpose*.

Obviously, the U of W cannot claim copyright to modifications that are
done by other parties. 

So anyone can grab the 3.91 Pine, make modifications to it (however small,
really), claim copyright to the modifications, and impose any restrictions
on this derived work as he pleases. The only restriction is that he
doesn't claim copyright to the parts of the code that U of W wrote, and
that he displays the U of W copyright message. The parts of the derived
work that come from the original Pine code would remain free, as such, but
that doesn't matter. 

The GNU terms are designed to prevent such incidents, and ensure that 
software remains free.

A few examples of what I mean:

Your excellent Imapd package is distributed under essentially the same
terms as Pine 3.91, and in this case you actually encourage people using
it for derived work. On which they can impose whatever restriction they 
want.

Or consider that your Pine 3.93 could be regarded as a derivate version
of Elm (in the historical sense at least, I know that only faint traces 
of the code actually remains). You are free to impose any restrictions 
that you desire on the derived work.

>  o No version of Pine has ever been completely free of conditions, 

Full "public domain" is not necessarily a good way of distributing free
software. And it is definitely *not* a requirement for using the term
"free". Nor is GNU terms, for that sake. Free software involves freedom to
use, modify *and* distribute. Under which 3.91 qualifies, and 3.92 does 
not. As simple as that.

Egil

---

From: Egil Kvaleberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 12:14:22 GMT

On Mon, 13 May 1996, Mark Crispin wrote:

> Anyone can modify any version of Pine
..
> Any entity, except a

I really think this should be made clearer. My interpretation was that
local modifications was to remain local.

Anyway, it doesn't help me, because since I am an independant consultant 
devoting some of my time to free software I'm by definition a for-profit 
entity. The same restriction would go for any company contributing 
to the maintenance of free software.

> program.

The GNU terms and restrictions are made to ensure that the software remains 
*free*. 

Egil

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From: [email-masked] (Alex Faundez)
Date: 15 May 1996 10:30:41 GMT

In article 
<[email-masked]>, 
[email-masked] says...
>> Anyone can modify any version of Pine.

What about a French translation of the documentation (Getting started with 
Pine) of PINE 3.91? Some of the students of the University of Geneva use Pine 
on a VMS machine. I have a copy of "Getting started with Pine 3.91" but in 
English and I know it's very complicated for a student who only has the basic 
knowledge in Computers to understand all those docs, manuals, user's guide in 
a foreign language, i.e. in English for most of them.
I don't want to translate the whole program of PINE (anyway, I could'nt), only 
a short and simple user's guide in French. But first I'd like to know if there 
is someone who has already had the same idea, so that we can help each other 
and not do the same work twice.

------------------------------------------------------------
Alexandre Faundez
University of Geneva (student)  
email: [email-masked] 
        URL: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/5964
------------------------------------------------------------