| 1 | -*- text -*- |
| 2 | For an order form for all Emacs and FSF distributions deliverable from |
| 3 | the USA, see http://www.gnu.org/order/order.html. |
| 4 | \f |
| 5 | GNU Emacs availability information, October 2000 |
| 6 | |
| 7 | Copyright (C) 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1998, |
| 8 | 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute |
| 11 | verbatim copies of this document provided that the |
| 12 | copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved. |
| 13 | |
| 14 | GNU Emacs is legally owned by the Free Software Foundation, but we |
| 15 | regard the foundation more as its custodian on behalf of the public. |
| 16 | |
| 17 | In the GNU project, when we speak of "free software", this refers to |
| 18 | liberty, not price. Specifically, it refers to the users' freedom to |
| 19 | study, copy, change and improve the software. Sometimes users pay |
| 20 | money for copies of GNU software, and sometimes they get copies at no |
| 21 | charge. But regardless of how they got the software, or whether it |
| 22 | was modified by anyone else along the way, they have the freedom to |
| 23 | copy and change it--those freedoms are what "free software" means. |
| 24 | |
| 25 | The precise conditions for copying and modification are stated in the |
| 26 | document "GNU General Public License," a copy of which is required to |
| 27 | be distributed with every copy of GNU Emacs. It is usually in a file |
| 28 | named `COPYING' in the same directory as this file. These conditions |
| 29 | are designed to make sure that everyone who has a copy of GNU Emacs |
| 30 | (including modified versions) has the freedom to redistribute and |
| 31 | change it. |
| 32 | |
| 33 | If you do not know anyone to get a copy of GNU Emacs from, you can |
| 34 | order a cd-rom from the Free Software Foundation. We distribute |
| 35 | several Emacs versions. We also distribute nicely typeset copies of |
| 36 | the Emacs user manual, Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, the Emacs |
| 37 | reference card, etc. See http://www.gnu.org/order/order.html. |
| 38 | |
| 39 | If you have Internet access, you can copy the latest Emacs |
| 40 | distribution from hosts, such as ftp.gnu.org. There are several ways |
| 41 | to do this; see http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html for more |
| 42 | information. |
| 43 | |
| 44 | Emacs has been run on GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and on many |
| 45 | Unix systems, on a variety of types of cpu, as well as on MSDOS, |
| 46 | Windows and MacOS. It also formerly worked on VMS and on Apollo |
| 47 | computers, though with some deficiencies that reflect problems in |
| 48 | these operating systems. See the file `MACHINES' in this directory |
| 49 | (see above) for a full list of machines that GNU Emacs has been tested |
| 50 | on, with machine-specific installation notes and warnings. |
| 51 | |
| 52 | Note that there is significant variation between Unix systems |
| 53 | supposedly running the same version of Unix; it is possible that what |
| 54 | works in GNU Emacs for me does not work on your system due to such an |
| 55 | incompatibility. Since I must avoid reading Unix source code, I |
| 56 | cannot even guess what such problems may exist. |
| 57 | |
| 58 | GNU Emacs is distributed with no warranty (see the General Public |
| 59 | License for full details, in the file `COPYING' in this directory (see |
| 60 | above)), and neither I nor the Free Software Foundation promises any |
| 61 | kind of support or assistance to users. The foundation keeps a list |
| 62 | of people who are willing to offer support and assistance for hire. |
| 63 | See http://www.gnu.org/help/gethelp.html. |
| 64 | |
| 65 | However, we plan to continue to improve GNU Emacs and keep it |
| 66 | reliable, so please send me any complaints and suggestions you have. |
| 67 | I will probably fix anything that I consider a malfunction. I may |
| 68 | make improvements that are suggested, but I may choose not to. |
| 69 | |
| 70 | If you are on the Internet, report bugs to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. You |
| 71 | can use the Emacs command M-x report-bug RET to mail a bug report. |
| 72 | Please read the Bugs section of the Emacs manual before reporting |
| 73 | bugs. |
| 74 | |
| 75 | General questions about the GNU Project can be asked of gnu@gnu.org. |
| 76 | |
| 77 | If you are a computer manufacturer, I encourage you to ship a copy of |
| 78 | GNU Emacs with every computer you deliver. The same copying |
| 79 | permission terms apply to computer manufacturers as to everyone else. |
| 80 | You should consider making a donation to help support the GNU project; |
| 81 | if you estimate what it would cost to distribute some commercial |
| 82 | product and divide it by five, that is a good amount. |
| 83 | |
| 84 | If you like GNU Emacs, please express your satisfaction with a |
| 85 | donation: send me or the Foundation what you feel Emacs has been worth |
| 86 | to you. If you are glad that I developed GNU Emacs and distribute it |
| 87 | as free software, rather than following the obstructive and antisocial |
| 88 | practices typical of software developers, reward me. If you would |
| 89 | like the Foundation to develop more free software, contribute. |
| 90 | |
| 91 | Your donations will help to support the development of additional GNU |
| 92 | software. GNU/Linux systems (variants of GNU, based on the kernel |
| 93 | Linux) have millions of users, but there is still much to be done. |
| 94 | For more information on GNU, see the file `GNU' in this directory (see |
| 95 | above). |
| 96 | |
| 97 | Richard M Stallman |
| 98 | Chief GNUisance, |
| 99 | President of the Free Software Foundation |