Date: Mon, 2 Jul 90 13:45:18 EDT
From: rms@ai.mit.edu
To: info-gnu-emacs@prep.ai.mit.edu
Subject: Are extortion fees exorbitant?

[Someone suggested that we "solve" the problem by buying licenses
from Lotus. He suggested this would be perfectly satisfactory if
the fees were not exorbitant.]

Giving Lotus the power to control who uses the interface users know is
bad for the public interest and takes away our freedom. (For
arguments for this, see the position paper that I mentioned recently.)

It is short-sighted to consider only the cost Lotus might choose to
impose on us in this occasion. Even if, amazingly, they were to make
it so small as to be insignificant, there is no reason to expect the
next owner of a user interface monopoly to do likewise.

For both of these reasons, what we must do is try to take away Lotus's
new power. If Lotus offers a few of us surrender on painless terms,
we should still keep resisting.

For the Free Software Foundation, this is a moot point, since the
alternative of surrender is not available. Licenses usually require
payment per copy. There is no way for this to be done for a free
program. We cannot require our users to pay Lotus when they
redistribute (not even in special cases), nor can we pay the fee for
them.