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99 lines
4.8 KiB
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99 lines
4.8 KiB
Plaintext
-*- text -*-
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For an order form for all Emacs and FSF distributions deliverable from
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the USA, see http://www.gnu.org/order/order.html.
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GNU Emacs availability information, October 2000
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Copyright (C) 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1998, 2000
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Free Software Foundation, Inc.
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Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute
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verbatim copies of this document provided that the
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copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved.
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GNU Emacs is legally owned by the Free Software Foundation, but we
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regard the foundation more as its custodian on behalf of the public.
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In the GNU project, when we speak of "free software", this refers to
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liberty, not price. Specifically, it refers to the users' freedom to
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study, copy, change and improve the software. Sometimes users pay
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money for copies of GNU software, and sometimes they get copies at no
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charge. But regardless of how they got the software, or whether it
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was modified by anyone else along the way, they have the freedom to
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copy and change it--those freedoms are what "free software" means.
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The precise conditions for copying and modification are stated in the
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document "GNU General Public License," a copy of which is required to
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be distributed with every copy of GNU Emacs. It is usually in a file
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named `COPYING' in the same directory as this file. These conditions
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are designed to make sure that everyone who has a copy of GNU Emacs
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(including modified versions) has the freedom to redistribute and
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change it.
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If you do not know anyone to get a copy of GNU Emacs from, you can
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order a cd-rom from the Free Software Foundation. We distribute
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several Emacs versions. We also distribute nicely typeset copies of
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the Emacs user manual, Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, the Emacs
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reference card, etc. See http://www.gnu.org/order/order.html.
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If you have Internet access, you can copy the latest Emacs
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distribution from hosts, such as ftp.gnu.org. There are several ways
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to do this; see http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html for more
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information.
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Emacs has been run on GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and on many
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Unix systems, on a variety of types of cpu, as well as on MSDOS,
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Windows and MacOS. It also formerly worked on VMS and on Apollo
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computers, though with some deficiencies that reflect problems in
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these operating systems. See the file `MACHINES' in this directory
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(see above) for a full list of machines that GNU Emacs has been tested
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on, with machine-specific installation notes and warnings.
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Note that there is significant variation between Unix systems
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supposedly running the same version of Unix; it is possible that what
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works in GNU Emacs for me does not work on your system due to such an
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incompatibility. Since I must avoid reading Unix source code, I
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cannot even guess what such problems may exist.
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GNU Emacs is distributed with no warranty (see the General Public
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License for full details, in the file `COPYING' in this directory (see
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above)), and neither I nor the Free Software Foundation promises any
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kind of support or assistance to users. The foundation keeps a list
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of people who are willing to offer support and assistance for hire.
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See http://www.gnu.org/help/gethelp.html.
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However, we plan to continue to improve GNU Emacs and keep it
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reliable, so please send me any complaints and suggestions you have.
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I will probably fix anything that I consider a malfunction. I may
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make improvements that are suggested, but I may choose not to.
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If you are on the Internet, report bugs to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. You
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can use the Emacs command M-x report-bug RET to mail a bug report.
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Please read the Bugs section of the Emacs manual before reporting
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bugs.
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General questions about the GNU Project can be asked of gnu@gnu.org.
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If you are a computer manufacturer, I encourage you to ship a copy of
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GNU Emacs with every computer you deliver. The same copying
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permission terms apply to computer manufacturers as to everyone else.
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You should consider making a donation to help support the GNU project;
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if you estimate what it would cost to distribute some commercial
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product and divide it by five, that is a good amount.
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If you like GNU Emacs, please express your satisfaction with a
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donation: send me or the Foundation what you feel Emacs has been worth
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to you. If you are glad that I developed GNU Emacs and distribute it
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as freeware, rather than following the obstructive and antisocial
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practices typical of software developers, reward me. If you would
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like the Foundation to develop more free software, contribute.
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Your donations will help to support the development of additional GNU
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software. GNU/Linux systems (variants of GNU, based on the kernel
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Linux) have millions of users, but there is still much to be done.
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For more information on GNU, see the file `GNU' in this directory (see
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above).
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Richard M Stallman
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Chief GNUisance,
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President of the Free Software Foundation
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