Re: Drop the Copyright Assignment requirement for Emacs

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   If people working for those companies or in activities involving such
   hardware/software, say in some hospital, and would like to use Emacs (or
   other GNU software) to develop possibly but non-necessary free or "open
   source" applications to work with/alongside non-free what should they
   do? 

One way that can help the free software movement is to get more people
using free software, trying to get managment, or otherwise to use more
free software, and release existing code under a free software
license.

E.g, having a free software mode for a propietery program, is just
slightly better than depending on the propietery program to edit its
source code.  But this wouldn't be something that would be suitable
for the GNU project, where the goal is to have software to tries to
make non-free software irrelevant.

   Isn't it unnecessary hard on them to not be able to talk about
   non-free software? 

Nobody is prohibiting anyone from talking about non-free software.  It
is just off-topic and unsuitable to discuss non-free software on GNU
projects mailing lists.  Much like it talking about ornithology on
emacs-devel.

   Isn't it also a limitation on GNU software itself if it can't be
   used in such cases as well as further inclination for development
   of non-free software?

That isn't the case though, GNU software can be used for such things.
The license explicitly allows it, and it is one of the fundamental
four software freedoms -- to run the software for any purpose.  But
the GNU project specifically doesn't try to cater to those needs since
they would work against its goals.