2 GNU Emacs availability information
4 Copyright (C) 1986-1993, 1995, 1998, 2000-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
5 See the end of the file for license conditions.
8 GNU Emacs is legally owned by the Free Software Foundation, but we
9 regard the foundation more as its custodian on behalf of the public.
11 In the GNU project, when we speak of "free software", this refers to
12 liberty, not price. Specifically, it refers to the users' freedom to
13 study, copy, change and improve the software. Sometimes users pay
14 money for copies of GNU software, and sometimes they get copies at no
15 charge. But regardless of how they got the software, or whether it
16 was modified by anyone else along the way, they have the freedom to
17 copy and change it--those freedoms are what "free software" means.
19 The precise conditions for copying and modification are stated in the
20 document "GNU General Public License," a copy of which is required to
21 be distributed with every copy of GNU Emacs. It is usually in a file
22 named `COPYING' in the same directory as this file. These conditions
23 are designed to make sure that everyone who has a copy of GNU Emacs
24 (including modified versions) has the freedom to redistribute and
27 For information on how to get GNU software, see
28 http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html. Printed copies of GNU
29 manuals, including the Emacs manual, are available from the FSF's
30 online store at http://shop.fsf.org.
32 Emacs has been run on GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and on many
33 Unix systems, on a variety of types of cpu, as well as on MSDOS,
34 Windows and MacOS. See the file `etc/MACHINES' in the Emacs
35 distribution for a full list of machines that GNU Emacs has been tested
36 on, with machine-specific installation notes and warnings.
38 GNU Emacs is distributed with no warranty (see the General Public
39 License for full details, in the file `COPYING' in this directory (see
40 above)), and neither I nor the Free Software Foundation promises any
41 kind of support or assistance to users. The foundation keeps a list
42 of people who are willing to offer support and assistance for hire.
43 See http://www.gnu.org/help/gethelp.html.
45 However, we plan to continue to improve GNU Emacs and keep it
46 reliable, so please send us any complaints and suggestions you have.
47 We will probably fix anything that we consider a malfunction. We may
48 make improvements that are suggested, but we may choose not to.
50 If you are on the Internet, report bugs to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
51 You can use the Emacs command M-x report-bug RET to mail a bug report.
52 Please read the Bugs section of the Emacs manual before reporting bugs.
54 General questions about the GNU Project can be asked of gnu@gnu.org.
56 If you are a computer manufacturer, I encourage you to ship a copy of
57 GNU Emacs with every computer you deliver. The same copying
58 permission terms apply to computer manufacturers as to everyone else.
59 You should consider making a donation to help support the GNU project;
60 if you estimate what it would cost to distribute some commercial
61 product and divide it by five, that is a good amount.
63 If you like GNU Emacs, please express your satisfaction with a donation:
64 send me (please email me about how) or the Foundation
65 (https://my.fsf.org/donate) what you feel Emacs has been worth to you.
66 If you are glad that I developed GNU Emacs and distribute it as free
67 software, rather than following the obstructive and antisocial
68 practices of proprietary software, you can reward me. If you would
69 like the Foundation to do more to forward the cause of free software,
72 Your donations will help to support the development of additional GNU
73 software. GNU/Linux systems (variants of GNU, based on the kernel
74 Linux) have millions of users, but there is still much to be done.
75 For more information on GNU, see the file `GNU' in this directory (see
80 President of the Free Software Foundation
82 This file is part of GNU Emacs.
84 GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
85 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
86 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
87 (at your option) any later version.
89 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
90 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
91 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
92 GNU General Public License for more details.
94 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
95 along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.