Kyoto Common Lisp addendum

["Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>]

A clarification from Mr. Yuasa:

To whom it may concern,

It seems that the previous note of ours, announcing that we are looking
for a free channel for KCL distribution, may have brought confusions and
misunderstandings to many people.  It may be mostly because only the
facts were mentioned, with no explanation of the background necessary to
understand our intention.

Our intention is to make it clear that KCL is an academic free software.
By "free", we mean that any one can get it free of charge, if he agrees
the conditions we put in the License Agreement.  It does NOT mean that
anyone has any *free*dom for KCL.  In particular, we have no intention
to put KCL into the public domain.  We would rather like to keep the
identity of KCL, so that we can keep up its high quality.

Some commercial organizations are now distributing KCL and they charge a
certain amount of fees to their customers.  These fees are exclusively
for the distribution costs and the service they offer to their
customers.  We require no royalties to them.  We are happy if more
people have got the chance to use this software.  It is a voluntary work
if we give them technical help on their requests.

Unfortunately, some people believe that we are receiving royalties for
KCL.  In order to overcome this wrong belief, we decided to look for a
free channel for KCL distribution.  Apparently, some KCL users
(including potential users) do not need any maintenance service at all.
We are glad to make KCL available to such users for free.  Note that we
do not intend to restrict the activities of commercial organizations for
KCL distribution.  We intend to give a choice to the user and to make it
clear what the user is charged for by commercial organizations.  Note
also that some KCL versions require additional programs developed by
commercial organizations and we cannot force them to make their code
open to the public, though we expect them to do so.

We are now seriously looking for a free channel.  We already found some
candidates, but it will take some time before we decide the best
appropriate channel for our purpose.  In case we cannot find an
appropriate channel, we ourselves will directly distribute KCL.
However, this will require a lot of work and we will have to spend a lot
of time.  So, this should be the last solution.

Thanks.

Taiichi Yuasa, Dr.
Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences
Kyoto University