annotate etc/DISTRIB @ 54314:597fb06dcdda

(comment-use-global-state): New var. (comment-search-forward): Use it.

						-*- text -*-
For an order form for all Emacs and FSF distributions deliverable from
the USA, see http://www.gnu.org/order/order.html.

	   GNU Emacs availability information, October 2000
Copyright (C) 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1998, 2000
	   Free Software Foundation, Inc.

	Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute
	verbatim copies of this document provided that the
	copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved.

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.

If you do not know anyone to get a copy of GNU Emacs from, you can
order a cd-rom from the Free Software Foundation.  We distribute
several Emacs versions.  We also distribute nicely typeset copies of
the Emacs user manual, Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, the Emacs
reference card, etc.  See http://www.gnu.org/order/order.html.

If you have Internet access, you can copy the latest Emacs
distribution from hosts, such as ftp.gnu.org.  There are several ways
to do this; see http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html for more
information.

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.  It also formerly worked on VMS and on Apollo
computers, though with some deficiencies that reflect problems in
these operating systems.  See the file `MACHINES' in this directory
(see above) for a full list of machines that GNU Emacs has been tested
on, with machine-specific installation notes and warnings.

Note that there is significant variation between Unix systems
supposedly running the same version of Unix; it is possible that what
works in GNU Emacs for me does not work on your system due to such an
incompatibility.  Since I must avoid reading Unix source code, I
cannot even guess what such problems may exist.

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 me any complaints and suggestions you have.
I will probably fix anything that I consider a malfunction.  I may
make improvements that are suggested, but I may choose not to.

If you are on the Internet, report bugs to [e-mail].  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 [e-mail].

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 or the Foundation what you feel Emacs has been worth
to you.  If you are glad that I developed GNU Emacs and distribute it
as freeware, rather than following the obstructive and antisocial
practices typical of software developers, reward me.  If you would
like the Foundation to develop more free software, 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