SXEmacs is free; this means that everyone is free to use it and free to redistribute it on a free basis. SXEmacs is not in the public domain; it is copyrighted and there are restrictions on its distribution, but these restrictions are designed to permit everything that a good cooperating citizen would want to do. What is not allowed is to try to prevent others from further sharing any version of SXEmacs that they might get from you. The precise conditions are found in the GNU General Public License that comes with SXEmacs and also appears following this section.
The easiest way to get a copy of SXEmacs is from someone else who has it. You need not ask for permission to do so, or tell any one else; just copy it.
If you have access to the Internet, you can get the latest version of SXEmacs from our download site at http://downloads.sxemacs.org.
The Free Software Foundation’s version of Emacs (called FSF Emacs in this manual and often referred to as GNU Emacs) is available by anonymous FTP from prep.ai.mit.edu.