Merge from emacs-23

[bpt/emacs.git] / etc / DISTRIB

						-*- text -*-
            GNU Emacs availability information

Copyright (C) 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995,
  1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009,
  2010, 2011  Free Software Foundation, Inc.
See the end of the file for license conditions.


GNU Emacs is legally owned by the Free Software Foundation, but we
regard the foundation more as its custodian on behalf of the public.

In the GNU project, when we speak of "free software", this refers to
liberty, not price.  Specifically, it refers to the users' freedom to
study, copy, change and improve the software.  Sometimes users pay
money for copies of GNU software, and sometimes they get copies at no
charge.  But regardless of how they got the software, or whether it
was modified by anyone else along the way, they have the freedom to
copy and change it--those freedoms are what "free software" means.

The precise conditions for copying and modification are stated in the
document "GNU General Public License," a copy of which is required to
be distributed with every copy of GNU Emacs.  It is usually in a file
named `COPYING' in the same directory as this file.  These conditions
are designed to make sure that everyone who has a copy of GNU Emacs
(including modified versions) has the freedom to redistribute and
change it.

For information on how to get GNU software, see
http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html.  Printed copies of GNU
manuals, including the Emacs manual, are available from the FSF's
online store at http://shop.fsf.org.

Emacs has been run on GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and on many
Unix systems, on a variety of types of cpu, as well as on MSDOS,
Windows and MacOS.  See the file `etc/MACHINES' in the Emacs
distribution for a full list of machines that GNU Emacs has been tested
on, with machine-specific installation notes and warnings.

GNU Emacs is distributed with no warranty (see the General Public
License for full details, in the file `COPYING' in this directory (see
above)), and neither I nor the Free Software Foundation promises any
kind of support or assistance to users.  The foundation keeps a list
of people who are willing to offer support and assistance for hire.
See http://www.gnu.org/help/gethelp.html.

However, we plan to continue to improve GNU Emacs and keep it
reliable, so please send us any complaints and suggestions you have.
We will probably fix anything that we consider a malfunction.  We may
make improvements that are suggested, but we may choose not to.

If you are on the Internet, report bugs to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
You can use the Emacs command M-x report-bug RET to mail a bug report.
Please read the Bugs section of the Emacs manual before reporting bugs.

General questions about the GNU Project can be asked of gnu@gnu.org.

If you are a computer manufacturer, I encourage you to ship a copy of
GNU Emacs with every computer you deliver.  The same copying
permission terms apply to computer manufacturers as to everyone else.
You should consider making a donation to help support the GNU project;
if you estimate what it would cost to distribute some commercial
product and divide it by five, that is a good amount.

If you like GNU Emacs, please express your satisfaction with a donation:
send me (please email me about how) or the Foundation
(https://my.fsf.org/donate) what you feel Emacs has been worth to you.
If you are glad that I developed GNU Emacs and distribute it as free
software, rather than following the obstructive and antisocial
practices of proprietary software, you can reward me.  If you would
like the Foundation to do more to forward the cause of free software,
you can contribute.

Your donations will help to support the development of additional GNU
software.  GNU/Linux systems (variants of GNU, based on the kernel
Linux) have millions of users, but there is still much to be done.
For more information on GNU, see the file `GNU' in this directory (see
above).

			Richard M Stallman
			Chief GNUisance,
			President of the Free Software Foundation
\f
This file is part of GNU Emacs.

GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with GNU Emacs.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.