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The Free Software Foundation has produced its second CD-ROM. This
CD-ROM contains sources for all of the programs on the Emacs, Languages,
Utilities, Experimental, and the MIT X Required and Optional tapes. In
addition, the CD-ROM contains the sources for MULE 0.9.7 (see "Free
Software and GNU in Japan"); some packages ported to Intel 80386 and
80486-based machines running MS-DOS: Demacs, DJGPP 2.4, and MIT Scheme
7.2; and a snapshot of the Emacs Lisp Archive at Ohio State University.
(You can get libraries in this archive by UUCP (ask
staff@cis.ohio-state.edu for directions) or by anonymous FTP
from archive.cis.ohio-state.edu in
`/pub/gnu/emacs/elisp-archive'.)
The CD-ROM does not contain the contents of the MIT Scheme, VMS, or Net2 tapes.
The version numbers of the software on the CD-ROM correspond to the version numbers listed in "GNU Software Available Now," except that the CD has both Ghostscript 2.5.2 and 2.6. Ghostscript 2.6 was released very shortly before the CD-ROM was made, and has a number of significant bugs, the most serious of which are that the PBM driver produces incorrect color output, and conversion from HSB to RGB color is incorrect. We are including it here in the hope that users will find it easier to apply (relatively small) diffs from 2.6 to 2.6.1 than to acquire 2.6.1 from scratch, or to apply diffs from 2.5.2 to 2.6 (very large) to 2.6.1.
The CD-ROM is in ISO 9660 format and can be mounted as a read-only file system on most operating systems. If your driver supports it you can mount the CD-ROM with "Rock Ridge" extensions and it will look just like an ordinary Unix file system, rather than one full of truncated and otherwise mangled names that fit the vanilla ISO 9660 specifications.
You can build most of this software without needing to copy the sources off the CD. It requires only enough free disk space for the object files and the intermediate build targets. Except for the GCC binaries for SPARCstations running Solaris 2.0 and the MS-DOS binaries, there are no precompiled programs on this CD. You will need a C compiler (programs which need some other interpreter or compiler normally provide the C source for a bootstrapping program).
The CD costs $400 if you are buying it for a business or other organization, or $100 if you are buying it for yourself.
The software on our disk is free; anyone can copy it and anyone can run it. What we charge for is the physical disk and the service of distribution.
We charge two different prices depending on who is buying. When a company or other organization buys the disk, we charge $400. When an individual buys the same disk, we charge just $100.
You, the reader, are certainly an individual, not a company. If you are buying a disk "in person", then you are probably doing so as an individual. But if you expect to be reimbursed by your employer, then the disk is really for the company, so please pay the company price and get reimbursed for the company price. We won't try to check up on you--we use the honor system--so please cooperate.
Buying CDs at the company price is especially helpful for the GNU project; just 80 CDs at the company price will support an FSF programmer or tech writer for a year.
In the past, our distribution tapes have been ordered mainly by companies. The CD at the price of $400 provides them with all of our software for a much lower price than they would previously have paid for six different tapes. To lower the price further would cut into the FSF's funds very badly.
However, for individuals, $400 is too high a price; hardly anyone could afford that. So we decided to make CDs available to individuals at the lower price of $100, but not do the same for companies.
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