Perl may be great, but...
David C Lawrence
(Jay Maynard) writes:
Jay> I'm watching the world do great things in perl, and I'm jealous, knowing
Jay> that Larry has succumbed to the Richard Stallman Syndrome: "That's not a
Jay> real computer, and I won't program to it." Richard is as blatant about
Jay> it as he is about the GNU Manifesto's real objectives. I don't really
Jay> think Larry has it in for 16-bit machines, but then again, perl could
Jay> have been written to avoid the more obvious limitations...as it is now,
Jay> perl crashes and burns spectacularly.
This is actually pretty amusing. Now it's a pathological disorder to
write good software that runs on a variety of machines, but not all of
them. Now you might believe that Richard needs treatment for other
things, but I don't think this is one of them.
[Obligatory religious cut: You'd have to ship a few MTS/Plus
programmers that way first.]
Dave
--
(setq mail '("ta...@pawl.rpi.edu" "ta...@ai.mit.edu" "ta...@rpitsmts.bitnet"))
Rodney Peck II
David> In <1989Nov22....@splut.conmicro.com> j...@splut.conmicro.com
David> (Jay Maynard) writes:
Jay> I'm watching the world do great things in perl, and I'm jealous, knowing
Jay> that Larry has succumbed to the Richard Stallman Syndrome: "That's not a
Jay> real computer, and I won't program to it." Richard is as blatant about
Jay> it as he is about the GNU Manifesto's real objectives.
David> This is actually pretty amusing. Now it's a pathological disorder to
David> write good software that runs on a variety of machines, but not all of
David> them. [...]
absolutely. Maybe Larry should be forced to make all his code
compatible with machines which he doesn't have?? I bit it doesn't run
on a vic 20 either.
David> [Obligatory religious cut: You'd have to ship a few MTS/Plus
David> programmers that way first.]
sigh..I've always wished that MTS ran emacs. Stupid piece of junk
MTS.
--
Rodney
Jay you ignorant splut! Maynard
>This is actually pretty amusing. Now it's a pathological disorder to
>write good software that runs on a variety of machines, but not all of
>them. Now you might believe that Richard needs treatment for other
>things, but I don't think this is one of them.
Actually, until perl, Larry Wall has done a fantastic job of making
software very useful and usable on small machines. rn, patch, and stuff
that uses the config package work just fine.
Actually, I think RMS needs treatment for his outlook on software
ownership... I find the GNU Manifesto to be as offensive as the
Communist Manifesto, and for many of the same reasons. His pathological
hatred for small machines is merely a symptom.
--
Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL | Never ascribe to malice that which can
j...@splut.conmicro.com (eieio)| adequately be explained by stupidity.
{attctc,bellcore}!texbell!splut!jay +----------------------------------------
"...when hasn't gibberish been legal C?" -- Tom Horsley, t...@ssd.harris.com
It's Mr. Boyo to you Dylan
>Actually, I think RMS needs treatment for his outlook on software
>ownership... I find the GNU Manifesto to be as offensive as the
>Communist Manifesto, and for many of the same reasons. His pathological
>hatred for small machines is merely a symptom.
BFD. Don't use his code. I have great hated for how EDS treats its
employess. I hate IBM's idea of a computer. I don't buy their
equipment/services.
For what we use GNU software for, the GNU Manifesto is just fine:
code paid for by the public should be owned by the public, and no
one should be able to unfairly benefit from its usage...
--
I most like CD players because I don't have to worry about feedback through
the needle anymore... :-)
J. Eric Townsend uunet!sugar!flatline!jet j...@flatline.lonestar.org
EastEnders Mailing list: east...@flatline.UUCP
Kyle Jones
> I'm watching the world do great things in perl, and I'm jealous, knowing
David C Lawrence writes:
> This is actually pretty amusing. Now it's a pathological disorder to
> write good software that runs on a variety of machines, but not all of
> them. Now you might believe that Richard needs treatment for other
> things, but I don't think this is one of them.
I disagree. Take GNU Emacs as an example. While Emacs runs on lots of
platforms, no one who's looked at its code would ever dream of calling
it portable. GNU Emacs has proliferated mainly because of the hard work
of those who have ported it to other systems, not because it was
originally written with portability in mind.
Now, while I think it's wonderful that Emacs has a strong enough following
that such jackleg maintenance is possible, this does not change the fact
that it is lousy software engineering practice to write systems that *have*
to be maintained this way.
Jay you ignorant splut! Maynard
>In article <1989Nov24....@splut.conmicro.com> j...@splut.conmicro.com (Jay "you ignorant splut!" Maynard) writes:
>>Actually, I think RMS needs treatment for his outlook on software
>>ownership... I find the GNU Manifesto to be as offensive as the
>>Communist Manifesto, and for many of the same reasons. His pathological
>>hatred for small machines is merely a symptom.
>BFD. Don't use his code. I have great hated for how EDS treats its
>employess. I hate IBM's idea of a computer. I don't buy their
>equipment/services.
I have little choice in the matter; damned little of GNUware will run on
my system anyway. It's filled with juicy little nonportabilities like
treating integers and pointers as interchangeable, and caring if the 32K
they just allocated is adjacent to the last 32K they allocated. I pretty
well have to just say NO to GNUware.
>For what we use GNU software for, the GNU Manifesto is just fine:
>code paid for by the public should be owned by the public, and no
>one should be able to unfairly benefit from its usage...
"Paid for by the public"? Hehehe.
Have you read the GNU Public License? It's a legal virus, contaminating
everything it touches. If you run GNU Bison at all, the entire program
you write is magically brought under its terms. I'm not sure if this
applies to GNU cc's libraries or not, but it wouldn't surprise me.
Of course, RMS wants this to happen, since he thinks private ownership
of software is eeeeeeeeeevil...
Most of GNUware was either written by RMS himself or by other people on
their own time. This is no more "paid for by the public" than NetHack.
It's Mr. Boyo to you Dylan
In article <1989Nov24....@splut.conmicro.com> j...@splut.conmicro.com (Jay "you ignorant splut!" Maynard) writes:
>>For what we use GNU software for, the GNU Manifesto is just fine:
>>code paid for by the public should be owned by the public, and no
>>one should be able to unfairly benefit from its usage...
>"Paid for by the public"? Hehehe.
In our case, yes. I work for the University of Houston. Lots of
people there do research. The code they write is financed by the public,
for all intents and purposes. (Almost the same as NSF funded
research, if not the same.) Anything I write using their equipment
(and possibly on their time) is technically owned by them, but they
can't (as I understand it) sell it to anyone outside of media charges.
(Note: I have absolutely no idea why Linda compilers cost as much
as they do, and I hope the NSF goes and investigates the people involved.
If Linda was developed with public money, people shouldn't be making
a profit on it...)
>Have you read the GNU Public License? It's a legal virus, contaminating
>everything it touches. If you run GNU Bison at all, the entire program
>you write is magically brought under its terms. I'm not sure if this
>applies to GNU cc's libraries or not, but it wouldn't surprise me.
I don't read it as applying to the cc libraries. It doesn't matter,
since the code we produce is (normally) distributed free to anyone
who wants a copy... (I don't know of any exceptions, but I won't
say "all code distributed free".)
>Most of GNUware was either written by RMS himself or by other people on
>their own time. This is no more "paid for by the public" than NetHack.
I didn't mean that GNUware is paid for by the public, and I think you
know that. I was talking about UofH code, which *is* paid for by
the public.
Peter da Silva
> code paid for by the public should be owned by the public, and no
> one should be able to unfairly benefit from its usage...
You're talking about the GNU copyright. Jay is talking about the GNU manifesto.
You know, where RMS makes it plain that he wants to outlaw private ownership
of intellectual property. If the GNU copyright was all there was to the
situation there wouldn't be a problem. People would just use or not use GNU
software as they liked.
Try reading between the lines. Lighten up. Buy an Amiga.
--
Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva <pe...@sugar.hackercorp.com>
`-_-'
'U` "Really, a video game is nothing more than a Skinner box."
-- Peter Merel <pe...@basser.oz>
It's Mr. Boyo to you Dylan
>You're talking about the GNU copyright. Jay is talking about the GNU manifesto.
I'm also talking about code developed by the University of Houston,
and other publicly owned interests. (Hey.. ADA was developed by
the gov't. It should be public domain, right?)
Greg Lindahl
>Have you read the GNU Public License? It's a legal virus, contaminating
>everything it touches. If you run GNU Bison at all, the entire program
>you write is magically brought under its terms. I'm not sure if this
>applies to GNU cc's libraries or not, but it wouldn't surprise me.
Yep, if GNU published gcc libraries they'd be covered too. So use the
library supplied with your system, or the PD library which is currently
under development courtesy of some Atari ST people.
If you want to use Bison, all you need to do is write a skeleton.
A few simple steps like this, and the GNU people admit that you could
use their software to generate software with no GNU Public License
restrictions at all. However, you seem to have no interest in the topic
other than claiming RMS is evil and out to outlaw your software.
How about researching this topic before you post on it again? I could
swear I've responded to postings on this very topic from you in
comp.misc before.
------
Greg Lindahl Astrophysicists for Choice
Nate Hess
>Now, while I think it's wonderful that Emacs has a strong enough following
>that such jackleg maintenance is possible, this does not change the fact
>that it is lousy software engineering practice to write systems that *have*
>to be maintained this way.
True, true.
We'll get a chance to see how Version 19 looks, since I imagine that a
lot of it is a re-write...
--woodstock
--
"What I like is when you're looking and thinking and looking
and thinking...and suddenly you wake up." - Hobbes
nh...@dvlseq.oracle.com or ...!uunet!oracle!nhess or (415) 598-8114
Jay you ignorant splut! Maynard
[describes how not to get infected by the GNU Public Virus...er...License]
>A few simple steps like this, and the GNU people admit that you could
>use their software to generate software with no GNU Public License
>restrictions at all. However, you seem to have no interest in the topic
>other than claiming RMS is evil and out to outlaw your software.
I can have little other interest at the moment, since they're too
snobbish to write software that could be portable to my machine.
However, the last time the GPL was discussed, the point came up that the
GPL was specifically written to have the virus-like effect. This is
indeed evil, since it coerces me into publishing my software under RMS's
terms, and in furtherance of RMS's goals, if I choose to use RMS's
tools. This is as evil as communism - for that's exactly what it is.
>How about researching this topic before you post on it again? I could
>swear I've responded to postings on this very topic from you in
>comp.misc before.
Why should I subject myself to yet another reading of RMS's diatribe and
RMS's legal virus? Once was all I could stomach.
It's Mr. Boyo to you Dylan
>However, the last time the GPL was discussed, the point came up that the
>GPL was specifically written to have the virus-like effect. This is
>indeed evil, since it coerces me into publishing my software under RMS's
>terms, and in furtherance of RMS's goals, if I choose to use RMS's
>tools. This is as evil as communism - for that's exactly what it is.
This is paranoid and delusional, at best. If you don't agree with
RMS's occasionally bozoid ideas, don't use his code. There's no
gun to your head or anything...
You just don't want anyone *else* to use his code, right?
(Obligatory Computer Religion Content)
If you're machine was based on a *REAL* CPU, you would be able to
run GNU software. My goofball 3b1 supports GCC/G++/etc because it is
based on the Most Holy Motorola 680x0. :-)
Jay you ignorant splut! Maynard
>>However, the last time the GPL was discussed, the point came up that the
>>GPL was specifically written to have the virus-like effect. This is
>>indeed evil, since it coerces me into publishing my software under RMS's
>>terms, and in furtherance of RMS's goals, if I choose to use RMS's
>>tools. This is as evil as communism - for that's exactly what it is.
>This is paranoid and delusional, at best. If you don't agree with
>RMS's occasionally bozoid ideas, don't use his code. There's no
>gun to your head or anything...
As I said last time, I generally *can't* use his code, despite the fact
that I'd occasionally like to. (In particular, I'd like to play Gnuchess
just to see how strong it is.) I'd like to have a less buggy C compiler
than Microbug's, but there's no hope at all for that, since gcc can't be
made to run on my machine through any amount of hacking. (Better
programmers than I have tried.)
As for RMS's ideas, that should be occasionally lucid, not occasionally
bozoid...
>You just don't want anyone *else* to use his code, right?
I want everyone to understand the legal effects of the GNU Public Virus.
I'd like to see it changed to remove the virus effects, but I realize
that there's not much chance of that, given RMS's idea that software
communism is the ideal structure.
>If you're machine was based on a *REAL* CPU, you would be able to
>run GNU software. My goofball 3b1 supports GCC/G++/etc because it is
>based on the Most Holy Motorola 680x0. :-)
Your 68010 may support GNUware, but it won't run the mountain of PC/DOS
programs out there; since I make money supporting such, I need that
capability.
I'd loooove to go to a 386, but I can't afford the $1500-2000 that
upgrading the motherboard and Unix would cost me.
Jim Thompson
Richard (I think its Richard, maybe not.) discusses Apple Computer, Inc.
(Sorry Erik.)
Enjoy,
Jim
@unnumbered Special Report: Apple's New Look and Feel
You might have read about the new look-and-feel copyright lawsuit,
Apple vs. Hewlett Packard and Microsoft. Apple claims the power to
stop people from writing any program that works even vaguely like a
Macintosh. If they and other look-and-feel plaintiffs triumph, they
will use this new power over the public to put an end to free software
that could substitute for commercial software.
In the weeks after the suit was filed, USENET reverberated with
condemnation for Apple. GNU supporters Richard Stallman, John Gilmore, and
Paul Rubin decided to take action against Apple's no-longer-deserved
reputation as a force for progress. Apple's reputation comes from having
made better computers; but now, Apple is working to make all non-Apple
computers worse. If this deprives the public of the future work of many
companies, the harm done would be many times the good that any one company
does. Our hope was that if the user community realizes how destructive
Apple's present actions are, Apple would lose customers and have more
trouble finding employees.
Our method of action was to print 5000 buttons that say ``Keep Your Lawyers
Off My Computer'' and hand them out at the West Coast Computer Faire. The
center of the button shows the rainbow-apple logo with a Gigeresque mouth
full of ferocious teeth. The picture was drawn by Etienne Suvasa, who also
drew the cover for the GNU Emacs manual. We call the picture ``Apple's New
Look and Feel''.
We gave out nearly 4000 buttons at the show (saving the rest for
afterwards). The result was a great success: the extent of anger at Apple
was apparent to everyone at the show. Many of the invited speakers at the
show wore our buttons, spoke about them, or even waved them from the
podium. The press noticed this: at least one Macintosh user's magazine
carried a photo of the button afterwards.
Some of you may be considering using, buying, or recommending Macintoshes;
you might even be writing programs for them or thinking about it. Please
think twice and look for an alternative. Doing those things means more
success for Apple, and this could encourage Apple to persist in its
aggression. It also encourages other companies to try similar
obstructionism.
[It is because of this boycott that we don't include support for Macintosh
Unix in GNU software.]
You might think that your current project ``needs'' a Macintosh now. If
you find yourself thinking this way, consider the far future. You probably
plan to be alive a year or two from now, and working on some other project.
You will want to get good computers for that, too. But an Apple monopoly
could easily make the price of such computers at that time several times
what it would otherwise be. Your decision to use some other kind of
machine, or to defer your purchases now, might make sure that the machines
your next project needs are affordable when you need them.
Newspapers report that Macintosh clones will be available soon. If
you must buy a Macintosh-like machine, buy a clone. Don't feed the
lawyers!
Jim Thompson - Network Engineering - Sun Microsystems - jth...@central.sun.com
Member of the Fatalistic International Society for Hedonistic Youth (FISHY)
"I woudn't recommend sex, drugs, or unix for everyone, but they work for me."
- Me (paraphrasing Hunter S. Thompson)
Jim Thompson
>In article <#V....@splut.conmicro.com> j...@splut.conmicro.com (Jay "you ignorant splut!" Maynard) writes:
>> ... This [GNU License] is
>>indeed evil, since it coerces me into publishing my software under RMS's
>>terms, and in furtherance of RMS's goals, if I choose to use RMS's
>>tools. This is as evil as communism - for that's exactly what it is.
>
>philosophy than capitalism, but there is nothing inherently *evil* in
>communism, as theorized. (It has been practiced in a pretty evil manner, I'll
>grant you, but it is apparent from events in Eastern Europe of late that
>communism (socialism) is maturing.)
I can't agree with Steve more.
>>Why should I subject myself to yet another reading of RMS's diatribe and
>>RMS's legal virus? Once was all I could stomach.
>
>For those of us who haven't read Mr Stallman's credo, where can we find a
>copy? Or is it too dangerous to be published? :-)
Appended below.
>
> spl (the p stands for
> perl, shmerl, I'll
> write a C program...)
Once again, I couldn't agree with Steve more.. :-)
(I couldn't find the generic GNU GPL, here's the one for Emacs.)
GNU EMACS GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
(Clarified 11 Feb 1988)
Copyright (C) 1985, 1987, 1988 Richard M. Stallman
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license, but changing it is not allowed. You can also
use this wording to make the terms for other programs.
The license agreements of most software companies keep you at the
mercy of those companies. By contrast, our general public license is
intended to give everyone the right to share GNU Emacs. To make
sure that you get the rights we want you to have, we need to make
restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you
to surrender the rights. Hence this license agreement.
Specifically, we want to make sure that you have the right to give
away copies of Emacs, that you receive source code or else can get it
if you want it, that you can change Emacs or use pieces of it in new
free programs, and that you know you can do these things.
To make sure that everyone has such rights, we have to forbid you to
deprive anyone else of these rights. For example, if you distribute
copies of Emacs, you must give the recipients all the rights that you
have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the
source code. And you must tell them their rights.
Also, for our own protection, we must make certain that everyone
finds out that there is no warranty for GNU Emacs. If Emacs is
modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know
that what they have is not what we distributed, so that any problems
introduced by others will not reflect on our reputation.
Therefore we (Richard Stallman and the Free Software Fundation,
Inc.) make the following terms which say what you must do to be
allowed to distribute or change GNU Emacs.
COPYING POLICIES
1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of GNU Emacs source code
as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and
appropriately publish on each copy a valid copyright notice "Copyright
(C) 1988 Free Software Foundation, Inc." (or with whatever year is
appropriate); keep intact the notices on all files that refer to this
License Agreement and to the absence of any warranty; and give any
other recipients of the GNU Emacs program a copy of this License
Agreement along with the program. You may charge a distribution fee
for the physical act of transferring a copy.
2. You may modify your copy or copies of GNU Emacs source code or
any portion of it, and copy and distribute such modifications under
the terms of Paragraph 1 above, provided that you also do the following:
a) cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating
that you changed the files and the date of any change; and
b) cause the whole of any work that you distribute or publish,
that in whole or in part contains or is a derivative of GNU Emacs
or any part thereof, to be licensed at no charge to all third
parties on terms identical to those contained in this License
Agreement (except that you may choose to grant more extensive
warranty protection to some or all third parties, at your option).
c) if the modified program serves as a text editor, cause it when
started running in the simplest and usual way, to print an
announcement including a valid copyright notice "Copyright (C)
1988 Free Software Foundation, Inc." (or with the year that is
appropriate), saying that there is no warranty (or else, saying
that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the
program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a
copy of this License Agreement.
d) You may charge a distribution fee for the physical act of
transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty
protection in exchange for a fee.
Mere aggregation of another unrelated program with this program (or its
derivative) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring
the other program under the scope of these terms.
3. You may copy and distribute GNU Emacs (or a portion or derivative of it,
under Paragraph 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of
Paragraphs 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
a) accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable
source code, which must be distributed under the terms of
Paragraphs 1 and 2 above; or,
b) accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
years, to give any third party free (except for a nominal
shipping charge) a complete machine-readable copy of the
corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of
Paragraphs 1 and 2 above; or,
c) accompany it with the information you received as to where the
corresponding source code may be obtained. (This alternative is
allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you
received the program in object code or executable form alone.)
For an executable file, complete source code means all the source code for
all modules it contains; but, as a special exception, it need not include
source code for modules which are standard libraries that accompany the
operating system on which the executable file runs.
4. You may not copy, sublicense, distribute or transfer GNU Emacs
except as expressly provided under this License Agreement. Any attempt
otherwise to copy, sublicense, distribute or transfer GNU Emacs is void and
your rights to use GNU Emacs under this License agreement shall be
automatically terminated. However, parties who have received computer
software programs from you with this License Agreement will not have
their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
5. If you wish to incorporate parts of GNU Emacs into other free programs
whose distribution conditions are different, write to the Free Software
Foundation. We have not yet worked out a simple rule that can be stated
here, but we will often permit this. We will be guided by the two goals of
preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of
promoting the sharing and reuse of software.
Your comments and suggestions about our licensing policies and our
software are welcome! Please contact the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, or call (617) 876-3296.
NO WARRANTY
BECAUSE GNU EMACS IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, WE PROVIDE ABSOLUTELY
NO WARRANTY, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE STATE LAW. EXCEPT
WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING, FREE SOFTWARE FOUNDATION, INC,
RICHARD M. STALLMAN AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE GNU EMACS "AS IS"
WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING,
BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY
AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE GNU EMACS
PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY
SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW WILL FREE SOFTWARE
FOUNDATION, INC., RICHARD M. STALLMAN, AND/OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY
MODIFY AND REDISTRIBUTE GNU EMACS AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU
FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY LOST PROFITS, LOST MONIES, OR OTHER
SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR
INABILITY TO USE (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA
BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY THIRD PARTIES OR A
FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH PROGRAMS NOT DISTRIBUTED BY
FREE SOFTWARE FOUNDATION, INC.) THE PROGRAM, EVEN IF YOU HAVE BEEN
ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY CLAIM BY ANY
OTHER PARTY.
Jim Thompson
They can make it up by using Free software.. :-)
Here are a few more GNU-meta-documents..
(This article, and the 3 following.)
I'm a staunch gnu-person.
As Len Tower says:
- Enjoy
Jim
The GNU Manifesto
Copyright (C) 1985 Richard M. Stallman
(Copying permission notice at the end.)
What's GNU? Gnu's Not Unix!
GNU, which stands for Gnu's Not Unix, is the name for the complete
Unix-compatible software system which I am writing so that I can give it
away free to everyone who can use it. Several other volunteers are helping
me. Contributions of time, money, programs and equipment are greatly
needed.
So far we have an Emacs text editor with Lisp for writing editor commands,
a source level debugger, a yacc-compatible parser generator, a linker, and
around 35 utilities. A shell (command interpreter) is nearly completed. A
new portable optimizing C compiler has compiled itself and may be released
this year. An initial kernel exists but many more features are needed to
emulate Unix. When the kernel and compiler are finished, it will be
possible to distribute a GNU system suitable for program development. We
will use @TeX{} as our text formatter, but an nroff is being worked on. We
will use the free, portable X window system as well. After this we will
add a portable Common Lisp, an Empire game, a spreadsheet, and hundreds of
other things, plus on-line documentation. We hope to supply, eventually,
everything useful that normally comes with a Unix system, and more.
GNU will be able to run Unix programs, but will not be identical to Unix.
We will make all improvements that are convenient, based on our experience
with other operating systems. In particular, we plan to have longer
filenames, file version numbers, a crashproof file system, filename
completion perhaps, terminal-independent display support, and perhaps
eventually a Lisp-based window system through which several Lisp programs
and ordinary Unix programs can share a screen. Both C and Lisp will be
available as system programming languages. We will try to support UUCP,
MIT Chaosnet, and Internet protocols for communication.
GNU is aimed initially at machines in the 68000/16000 class with virtual
memory, because they are the easiest machines to make it run on. The extra
effort to make it run on smaller machines will be left to someone who wants
to use it on them.
To avoid horrible confusion, please pronounce the `G' in the word `GNU'
when it is the name of this project.
Who Am I?
I am Richard Stallman, inventor of the original much-imitated EMACS editor,
formerly at the Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT. I have worked
extensively on compilers, editors, debuggers, command interpreters, the
Incompatible Timesharing System and the Lisp Machine operating system. I
pioneered terminal-independent display support in ITS. Since then I have
implemented one crashproof file system and two window systems for Lisp
machines, and designed a third window system now being implemented; this
one will be ported to many systems including use in GNU. [Historical note:
The window system project was not completed; GNU now plans to use the
X window system.]
Why I Must Write GNU
I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I must
share it with other people who like it. Software sellers want to divide
the users and conquer them, making each user agree not to share with
others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users in this way. I
cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software
license agreement. For years I worked within the Artificial Intelligence
Lab to resist such tendencies and other inhospitalities, but eventually
they had gone too far: I could not remain in an institution where such
things are done for me against my will.
So that I can continue to use computers without dishonor, I have decided to
put together a sufficient body of free software so that I will be able to
get along without any software that is not free. I have resigned from the
AI lab to deny MIT any legal excuse to prevent me from giving GNU away.
Why GNU Will Be Compatible with Unix
Unix is not my ideal system, but it is not too bad. The essential features
of Unix seem to be good ones, and I think I can fill in what Unix lacks
without spoiling them. And a system compatible with Unix would be
convenient for many other people to adopt.
How GNU Will Be Available
GNU is not in the public domain. Everyone will be permitted to modify and
redistribute GNU, but no distributor will be allowed to restrict its
further redistribution. That is to say, proprietary modifications will not
be allowed. I want to make sure that all versions of GNU remain free.
Why Many Other Programmers Want to Help
I have found many other programmers who are excited about GNU and want to
help.
Many programmers are unhappy about the commercialization of system
software. It may enable them to make more money, but it requires them to
feel in conflict with other programmers in general rather than feel as
comrades. The fundamental act of friendship among programmers is the
sharing of programs; marketing arrangements now typically used essentially
forbid programmers to treat others as friends. The purchaser of software
must choose between friendship and obeying the law. Naturally, many decide
that friendship is more important. But those who believe in law often do
not feel at ease with either choice. They become cynical and think that
programming is just a way of making money.
By working on and using GNU rather than proprietary programs, we can be
hospitable to everyone and obey the law. In addition, GNU serves as an
example to inspire and a banner to rally others to join us in sharing.
This can give us a feeling of harmony which is impossible if we use
software that is not free. For about half the programmers I talk to, this
is an important happiness that money cannot replace.
How You Can Contribute
I am asking computer manufacturers for donations of machines and money.
I'm asking individuals for donations of programs and work.
One consequence you can expect if you donate machines is that GNU will run
on them at an early date. The machines should be complete, ready to use
systems, approved for use in a residential area, and not in need of
sophisticated cooling or power.
I have found very many programmers eager to contribute part-time work for
GNU. For most projects, such part-time distributed work would be very hard
to coordinate; the independently-written parts would not work together.
But for the particular task of replacing Unix, this problem is absent. A
complete Unix system contains hundreds of utility programs, each of which
is documented separately. Most interface specifications are fixed by Unix
compatibility. If each contributor can write a compatible replacement for
a single Unix utility, and make it work properly in place of the original
on a Unix system, then these utilities will work right when put together.
Even allowing for Murphy to create a few unexpected problems, assembling
these components will be a feasible task. (The kernel will require closer
communication and will be worked on by a small, tight group.)
If I get donations of money, I may be able to hire a few people full or
part time. The salary won't be high by programmers' standards, but I'm
looking for people for whom building community spirit is as important as
making money. I view this as a way of enabling dedicated people to devote
their full energies to working on GNU by sparing them the need to make a
living in another way.
Why All Computer Users Will Benefit
Once GNU is written, everyone will be able to obtain good system software
free, just like air.
This means much more than just saving everyone the price of a Unix license.
It means that much wasteful duplication of system programming effort will
be avoided. This effort can go instead into advancing the state of the
art.
Complete system sources will be available to everyone. As a result, a user
who needs changes in the system will always be free to make them himself,
or hire any available programmer or company to make them for him. Users
will no longer be at the mercy of one programmer or company which owns the
sources and is in sole position to make changes.
Schools will be able to provide a much more educational environment by
encouraging all students to study and improve the system code. Harvard's
computer lab used to have the policy that no program could be installed on
the system if its sources were not on public display, and upheld it by
actually refusing to install certain programs. I was very much inspired by
this.
Finally, the overhead of considering who owns the system software and what
one is or is not entitled to do with it will be lifted.
Arrangements to make people pay for using a program, including licensing of
copies, always incur a tremendous cost to society through the cumbersome
mechanisms necessary to figure out how much (that is, which programs) a
person must pay for. And only a police state can force everyone to obey
them. Consider a space station where air must be manufactured at great
cost: charging each breather per liter of air may be fair, but wearing the
metered gas mask all day and all night is intolerable even if everyone can
afford to pay the air bill. And the TV cameras everywhere to see if you
ever take the mask off are outrageous. It's better to support the air
plant with a head tax and chuck the masks.
Copying all or parts of a program is as natural to a programmer as
breathing, and as productive. It ought to be as free.
Some Easily Rebutted Objections to GNU's Goals
"Nobody will use it if it is free, because that means
they can't rely on any support."
"You have to charge for the program
to pay for providing the support."
If people would rather pay for GNU plus service than get GNU free without
service, a company to provide just service to people who have obtained GNU
free ought to be profitable.
We must distinguish between support in the form of real programming work
and mere handholding. The former is something one cannot rely on from a
software vendor. If your problem is not shared by enough people, the
vendor will tell you to get lost.
If your business needs to be able to rely on support, the only way is to
have all the necessary sources and tools. Then you can hire any available
person to fix your problem; you are not at the mercy of any individual.
With Unix, the price of sources puts this out of consideration for most
businesses. With GNU this will be easy. It is still possible for there to
be no available competent person, but this problem cannot be blamed on
distibution arrangements. GNU does not eliminate all the world's problems,
only some of them.
Meanwhile, the users who know nothing about computers need handholding:
doing things for them which they could easily do themselves but don't know
how.
Such services could be provided by companies that sell just hand-holding
and repair service. If it is true that users would rather spend money and
get a product with service, they will also be willing to buy the service
having got the product free. The service companies will compete in quality
and price; users will not be tied to any particular one. Meanwhile, those
of us who don't need the service should be able to use the program without
paying for the service.
"You cannot reach many people without advertising,
and you must charge for the program to support that."
"It's no use advertising a program people can get free."
There are various forms of free or very cheap publicity that can be used to
inform numbers of computer users about something like GNU. But it may be
true that one can reach more microcomputer users with advertising. If this
is really so, a business which advertises the service of copying and
mailing GNU for a fee ought to be successful enough to pay for its
advertising and more. This way, only the users who benefit from the
advertising pay for it.
On the other hand, if many people get GNU from their friends, and such
companies don't succeed, this will show that advertising was not really
necessary to spread GNU. Why is it that free market advocates don't want
to let the free market decide this?
"My company needs a proprietary operating system
to get a competitive edge."
GNU will remove operating system software from the realm of competition.
You will not be able to get an edge in this area, but neither will your
competitors be able to get an edge over you. You and they will compete in
other areas, while benefitting mutually in this one. If your business is
selling an operating system, you will not like GNU, but that's tough on
you. If your business is something else, GNU can save you from being
pushed into the expensive business of selling operating systems.
I would like to see GNU development supported by gifts from many
manufacturers and users, reducing the cost to each.
"Don't programmers deserve a reward for their creativity?"
If anything deserves a reward, it is social contribution. Creativity can
be a social contribution, but only in so far as society is free to use the
results. If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative
programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict
the use of these programs.
"Shouldn't a programmer be able to ask for a reward for his creativity?"
There is nothing wrong with wanting pay for work, or seeking to maximize
one's income, as long as one does not use means that are destructive. But
the means customary in the field of software today are based on
destruction.
Extracting money from users of a program by restricting their use of it is
destructive because the restrictions reduce the amount and the ways that
the program can be used. This reduces the amount of wealth that humanity
derives from the program. When there is a deliberate choice to restrict,
the harmful consequences are deliberate destruction.
The reason a good citizen does not use such destructive means to become
wealthier is that, if everyone did so, we would all become poorer from the
mutual destructiveness. This is Kantian ethics; or, the Golden Rule.
Since I do not like the consequences that result if everyone hoards
information, I am required to consider it wrong for one to do so.
Specifically, the desire to be rewarded for one's creativity does not
justify depriving the world in general of all or part of that creativity.
"Won't programmers starve?"
I could answer that nobody is forced to be a programmer. Most of us cannot
manage to get any money for standing on the street and making faces. But
we are not, as a result, condemned to spend our lives standing on the
street making faces, and starving. We do something else.
But that is the wrong answer because it accepts the questioner's implicit
assumption: that without ownership of software, programmers cannot possibly
be paid a cent. Supposedly it is all or nothing.
The real reason programmers will not starve is that it will still be
possible for them to get paid for programming; just not paid as much as
now.
Restricting copying is not the only basis for business in software. It is
the most common basis because it brings in the most money. If it were
prohibited, or rejected by the customer, software business would move to
other bases of organization which are now used less often. There are
always numerous ways to organize any kind of business.
Probably programming will not be as lucrative on the new basis as it is
now. But that is not an argument against the change. It is not considered
an injustice that sales clerks make the salaries that they now do. If
programmers made the same, that would not be an injustice either. (In
practice they would still make considerably more than that.)
"Don't people have a right to control how their creativity is used?"
"Control over the use of one's ideas" really constitutes control over other
people's lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult.
People who have studied the issue of intellectual property rights carefully
(such as lawyers) say that there is no intrinsic right to intellectual
property. The kinds of supposed intellectual property rights that the
government recognizes were created by specific acts of legislation for
specific purposes.
For example, the patent system was established to encourage inventors to
disclose the details of their inventions. Its purpose was to help society
rather than to help inventors. At the time, the life span of 17 years for
a patent was short compared with the rate of advance of the state of the
art. Since patents are an issue only among manufacturers, for whom the
cost and effort of a license agreement are small compared with setting up
production, the patents often do not do much harm. They do not obstruct
most individuals who use patented products.
The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors
frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction. This
practice was useful, and is the only way many authors' works have survived
even in part. The copyright system was created expressly for the purpose
of encouraging authorship. In the domain for which it was invented--books,
which could be copied economically only on a printing press--it did little
harm, and did not obstruct most of the individuals who read the books.
All intellectual property rights are just licenses granted by society
because it was thought, rightly or wrongly, that society as a whole would
benefit by granting them. But in any particular situation, we have to ask:
are we really better off granting such license? What kind of act are we
licensing a person to do?
The case of programs today is very different from that of books a hundred
years ago. The fact that the easiest way to copy a program is from one
neighbor to another, the fact that a program has both source code and
object code which are distinct, and the fact that a program is used rather
than read and enjoyed, combine to create a situation in which a person who
enforces a copyright is harming society as a whole both materially and
spiritually; in which a person should not do so regardless of whether the
law enables him to.
"Competition makes things get done better."
The paradigm of competition is a race: by rewarding the winner, we
encourage everyone to run faster. When capitalism really works this way,
it does a good job; but its defenders are wrong in assuming it always works
this way. If the runners forget why the reward is offered and become
intent on winning, no matter how, they may find other strategies--such as,
attacking other runners. If the runners get into a fist fight, they will
all finish late.
Proprietary and secret software is the moral equivalent of runners in a
fist fight. Sad to say, the only referee we've got does not seem to
object to fights; he just regulates them ("For every ten yards you run, you
are allowed one kick."). He really ought to break them up, and penalize
runners for even trying to fight.
"Won't everyone stop programming without a monetary incentive?"
Actually, many people will program with absolutely no monetary incentive.
Programming has an irresistible fascination for some people, usually the
people who are best at it. There is no shortage of professional musicians
who keep at it even though they have no hope of making a living that way.
But really this question, though commonly asked, is not appropriate to the
situation. Pay for programmers will not disappear, only become less. So
the right question is, will anyone program with a reduced monetary
incentive? My experience shows that they will.
For more than ten years, many of the world's best programmers worked at the
Artificial Intelligence Lab for far less money than they could have had
anywhere else. They got many kinds of non-monetary rewards: fame and
appreciation, for example. And creativity is also fun, a reward in itself.
Then most of them left when offered a chance to do the same interesting
work for a lot of money.
What the facts show is that people will program for reasons other than
riches; but if given a chance to make a lot of money as well, they will
come to expect and demand it. Low-paying organizations do poorly in
competition with high-paying ones, but they do not have to do badly if the
high-paying ones are banned.
"We need the programmers desperately. If they demand that we
stop helping our neighbors, we have to obey."
You're never so desperate that you have to obey this sort of demand.
Remember: millions for defense, but not a cent for tribute!
"Programmers need to make a living somehow."
In the short run, this is true. However, there are plenty of ways that
programmers could make a living without selling the right to use a program.
This way is customary now because it brings programmers and businessmen the
most money, not because it is the only way to make a living. It is easy to
find other ways if you want to find them. Here are a number of examples.
A manufacturer introducing a new computer will pay for the porting of
operating systems onto the new hardware.
The sale of teaching, hand-holding and maintenance services could also
employ programmers.
People with new ideas could distribute programs as freeware, asking for
donations from satisfied users, or selling hand-holding services. I have
met people who are already working this way successfully.
Users with related needs can form users' groups, and pay dues. A group
would contract with programming companies to write programs that the
group's members would like to use.
All sorts of development can be funded with a Software Tax:
Suppose everyone who buys a computer has to pay x percent of
the price as a software tax. The government gives this to
an agency like the NSF to spend on software development.
But if the computer buyer makes a donation to software development
himself, he can take a credit against the tax. He can donate to
the project of his own choosing--often, chosen because he hopes to
use the results when it is done. He can take a credit for any amount
of donation up to the total tax he had to pay.
The total tax rate could be decided by a vote of the payers of
the tax, weighted according to the amount they will be taxed on.
The consequences:
* the computer-using community supports software development.
* this community decides what level of support is needed.
* users who care which projects their share is spent on
can choose this for themselves.
In the long run, making programs free is a step toward the post-scarcity
world, where nobody will have to work very hard just to make a living.
People will be free to devote themselves to activities that are fun,
such as programming, after spending the necessary ten hours a week
on required tasks such as legislation, family counseling, robot
repair and asteroid prospecting. There will be no need to be able
to make a living from programming.
We have already greatly reduced the amount of work that the whole
society must do for its actual productivity, but only a little of this
has translated itself into leisure for workers because much
nonproductive activity is required to accompany productive activity.
The main causes of this are bureaucracy and isometric struggles
against competition. Free software will greatly reduce these
drains in the area of software production. We must do this,
in order for technical gains in productivity to translate into
less work for us.
Copyright (C) 1985 Richard M. Stallman
Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
copyright notice and permission notice are preserved,
and that the distributor grants the recipient permission
for further redistribution as permitted by this notice.
Modified versions may not be made.
Jim Thompson
same so you can kill the thread if you like.)
Enjoy,
Jim
GNU'S NOT UNIX
Conducted by David Betz and Jon Edwards
Richard Stallman discusses his public-domain
UNIX-compatible software system
with BYTE editors
(July 1986)
Copyright (C) 1986 Richard Stallman. Permission is granted to make and
distribute copies of this article as long as the copyright and this notice
appear on all copies.
Richard Stallman has undertaken probably the most ambitious free software
development project to date, the GNU system. In his GNU Manifesto,
published in the March 1985 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal, Stallman described
GNU as a "complete Unix-compatible software system which I am writing so
that I can give it away free to everyone who can use it... Once GNU is
written, everyone will be able to obtain good system software free, just
like air." (GNU is an acronym for GNU's Not UNIX; the "G" is pronounced.)
Stallman is widely known as the author of EMACS, a powerful text editor
that he developed at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. It is no
coincidence that the first piece of software produced as part of the GNU
project was a new implementation of EMACS. GNU EMACS has already achieved a
reputation as one of the best implementations of EMACS currently available
at any price.
BYTE: We read your GNU Manifesto in the March 1985 issue of Dr. Dobb's.
What has happened since? Was that really the beginning, and how have you
progressed since then?
Stallman: The publication in Dr. Dobb's wasn't the beginning of the
project. I wrote the GNU Manifesto when I was getting ready to start the
project, as a proposal to ask computer manufacturers for funding. They
didn't want to get involved, and I decided that rather than spend my time
trying to pursue funds, I ought to spend it writing code. The manifesto was
published about a year and a half after I had written it, when I had barely
begun distributing the GNU EMACS. Since that time, in addition to making
GNU EMACS more complete and making it run on many more computers, I have
nearly finished the optimizing C compiler and all the other software that
is needed for running C programs. This includes a source-level debugger
that has many features that the other source-level debuggers on UNIX don't
have. For example, it has convenience variables within the debugger so you
can save values, and it also has a history of all the values that you have
printed out, making it tremendously easier to chase around list structures.
BYTE: You have finished an editor that is now widely distributed and you
are about to finish the compiler.
Stallman: I expect that it will be finished this October.
BYTE: What about the kernel?
Stallman: I'm currently planning to start with the kernel that was written
at MIT and was released to the public recently with the idea that I would
use it. This kernel is called TRIX; it's based on remote procedure call. I
still need to add compatibility for a lot of the features of UNIX which it
doesn't have currently. I haven't started to work on that yet. I'm
finishing the compiler before I go to work on the kernel. I am also going
to have to rewrite the file system. I intend to make it failsafe just by
having it write blocks in the proper order so that the disk structure is
always consistent. Then I want to add version numbers. I have a complicated
scheme to reconcile version numbers with the way people usually use UNIX.
You have to be able to specify filenames without version numbers, but you
also have to be able to specify them with explicit version numbers, and
these both need to work with ordinary UNIX programs that have not been
modified in any way to deal with the existence of this feature. I think I
have a scheme for doing this, and only trying it will show me whether it
really does the job.
BYTE: Do you have a brief description you can give us as to how GNU as a
system will be superior to other systems? We know that one of your goals is
to produce something that is compatible with UNIX. But at least in the area
of file systems you have already said that you are going to go beyond UNIX
and produce something that is better.
Stallman: The C compiler will produce better code and run faster. The
debugger is better. With each piece I may or may not find a way to improve
it. But there is no one answer to this question. To some extent I am
getting the benefit of reimplementation, which makes many systems much
better. To some extent it's because I have been in the field a long time
and worked on many other systems. I therefore have many ideas to bring to
bear. One way in which it will be better is that practically everything in
the system will work on files of any size, on lines of any size, with any
characters appearing in them. The UNIX system is very bad in that regard.
It's not anything new as a principle of software engineering that you
shouldn't have arbitrary limits. But it just was the standard practice in
writing UNIX to put those in all the time, possibly just because they were
writing it for a very small computer. The only limit in the GNU system is
when your program runs out of memory because it tried to work on too much
data and there is no place to keep it all.
BYTE: And that isn't likely to be hit if you've got virtual memory. You may
just take forever to come up with the solution.
Stallman: Actually these limits tend to hit in a time long before you take
forever to come up with the solution.
BYTE: Can you say something about what types of machines and environments
GNU EMACS in particular has been made to run under? It's now running on
VAXes; has it migrated in any form to personal computers?
Stallman: I'm not sure what you mean by personal computers. For example, is
a Sun a personal computer? GNU EMACS requires at least a megabyte of
available memory and preferably more. It is normally used on machines that
have virtual memory. Except for various technical problems in a few C
compilers, almost any machine with virtual memory and running a fairly
recent version of UNIX will run GNU EMACS, and most of them currently do.
BYTE: Has anyone tried to port it to Ataris or Macintoshes?
Stallman: The Atari 1040ST still doesn't have quite enough memory. The next
Atari machine, I expect, will run it. I also think that future Ataris will
have some forms of memory mapping. Of course, I am not designing the
software to run on the kinds of computers that are prevalent today. I knew
when I started this project it was going to take a few years. I therefore
decided that I didn't want to make a worse system by taking on the
additional challenge of making it run in the currently constrained
environment. So instead I decided I'm going to write it in the way that
seems the most natural and best. I am confident that in a couple of years
machines of sufficient size will be prevalent. In fact, increases in memory
size are happening so fast it surprises me how slow most of the people are
to put in virtual memory; I think it is totally essential.
BYTE: I think people don't really view it as being necessary for
single-user machines.
Stallman: They don't understand that single user doesn't mean single
program. Certainly for any UNIX-like system it's important to be able to
run lots of different processes at the same time even if there is only one
of you. You could run GNU EMACS on a nonvirtual-memory machine with enough
memory, but you couldn't run the rest of the GNU system very well or a UNIX
system very well.
BYTE: How much of LISP is present in GNU EMACS? It occurred to me that it
may be useful to use that as a tool for learning LISP.
Stallman: You can certainly do that. GNU EMACS contains a complete,
although not very powerful, LISP system. It's powerful enough for writing
editor commands. It's not comparable with, say, a Common LISP System,
something you could really use for system programming, but it has all the
things that LISP needs to have.
BYTE: Do you have any predictions about when you would be likely to
distribute a workable environment in which, if we put it on our machines or
workstations, we could actually get reasonable work done without using
anything other than code that you distribute?
Stallman: It's really hard to say. That could happen in a year, but of
course it could take longer. It could also conceivably take less, but
that's not too likely anymore. I think I'll have the compiler finished in a
month or two. The only other large piece of work I really have to do is in
the kernel. I first predicted GNU would take something like two years, but
it has now been two and a half years and I'm still not finished. Part of
the reason for the delay is that I spent a lot of time working on one
compiler that turned out to be a dead end. I had to rewrite it completely.
Another reason is that I spent so much time on GNU EMACS. I originally
thought I wouldn't have to do that at all.
BYTE: Tell us about your distribution scheme.
Stallman: I don't put software or manuals in the public domain, and the
reason is that I want to make sure that all the users get the freedom to
share. I don't want anyone making an improved version of a program I wrote
and distributing it as proprietary. I don't want that to ever be able to
happen. I want to encourage the free improvements to these programs, and
the best way to do that is to take away any temptation for a person to make
improvements nonfree. Yes, a few of them will refrain from making
improvements, but a lot of others will make the same improvements and
they'll make them free.
BYTE: And how do you go about guaranteeing that?
Stallman: I do this by copyrighting the programs and putting on a notice
giving people explicit permission to copy the programs and change them but
only on the condition that they distribute under the same terms that I
used, if at all. You don't have to distribute the changes you make to any
of my programs--you can just do it for yourself, and you don't have to give
it to anyone or tell anyone. But if you do give it to someone else, you
have to do it under the same terms that I use.
BYTE: Do you obtain any rights over the executable code derived from the C
compiler?
Stallman: The copyright law doesn't give me copyright on output from the
compiler, so it doesn't give me a way to say anything about that, and in
fact I don't try to. I don't sympathize with people developing proprietary
products with any compiler, but it doesn't seem especially useful to try to
stop them from developing them with this compiler, so I am not going to.
BYTE: Do your restrictions apply if people take pieces of your code to
produce other things as well?
Stallman: Yes, if they incorporate with changes any sizable piece. If it
were two lines of code, that's nothing; copyright doesn't apply to that.
Essentially, I have chosen these conditions so that first there is a
copyright, which is what all the software hoarders use to stop everybody
from doing anything, and then I add a notice giving up part of those
rights. So the conditions talk only about the things that copyright applies
to. I don't believe that the reason you should obey these conditions is
because of the law. The reason you should obey is because an upright person
when he distributes software encourages other people to share it further.
BYTE: In a sense you are enticing people into this mode of thinking by
providing all of these interesting tools that they can use but only if they
buy into your philosophy.
Stallman: Yes. You could also see it as using the legal system that
software hoarders have set up against them. I'm using it to protect the
public from them.
BYTE: Given that manufacturers haven't wanted to fund the project, who do
you think will use the GNU system when it is done?
Stallman: I have no idea, but it is not an important question. My purpose
is to make it possible for people to reject the chains that come with
proprietary software. I know that there are people who want to do that.
Now, there may be others who don't care, but they are not my concern. I
feel a bit sad for them and for the people that they influence. Right now a
person who perceives the unpleasantness of the terms of proprietary
software feels that he is stuck and has no alternative except not to use a
computer. Well, I am going to give him a comfortable alternative.
Other people may use the GNU system simply because it is technically
superior. For example, my C compiler is producing about as good a code as I
have seen from any C compiler. And GNU EMACS is generally regarded as being
far superior to the commercial competition. And GNU EMACS was not funded by
anyone either, but everyone is using it. I therefore think that many people
will use the rest of the GNU system because of its technical advantages.
But I would be doing a GNU system even if I didn't know how to make it
technically better because I want it to be socially better. The GNU project
is really a social project. It uses technical means to make a change in
society.
BYTE: Then it is fairly important to you that people adopt GNU. It is not
just an academic exercise to produce this software to give it away to
people. You hope it will change the way the software industry operates.
Stallman: Yes. Some people say no one will ever use it because it doesn't
have some attractive corporate logo on it, and other people say that they
think it is tremendously important and everyone's going to want to use it.
I have no way of knowing what is really going to happen. I don't know any
other way to try to change the ugliness of the field that I find myself in,
so this is what I have to do.
BYTE: Can you address the implications? You obviously feel that this is an
important political and social statement.
Stallman: It is a change. I'm trying to change the way people approach
knowledge and information in general. I think that to try to own knowledge,
to try to control whether people are allowed to use it, or to try to stop
other people from sharing it, is sabotage. It is an activity that benefits
the person that does it at the cost of impoverishing all of society. One
person gains one dollar by destroying two dollars' worth of wealth. I think
a person with a conscience wouldn't do that sort of thing except perhaps if
he would otherwise die. And of course the people who do this are fairly
rich; I can only conclude that they are unscrupulous. I would like to see
people get rewards for writing free software and for encouraging other
people to use it. I don't want to see people get rewards for writing
proprietary software because that is not really a contribution to society.
The principle of capitalism is the idea that people manage to make money by
producing things and thereby are encouraged to do what is useful,
automatically, so to speak. But that doesn't work when it comes to owning
knowledge. They are encouraged to do not really what's useful, and what
really is useful is not encouraged. I think it is important to say that
information is different from material objects like cars and loaves of
bread because people can copy it and share it on their own and, if nobody
attempts to stop them, they can change it and make it better for
themselves. That is a useful thing for people to do. This isn't true of
loaves of bread. If you have one loaf of bread and you want another, you
can't just put your loaf of bread into a bread copier. you can't make
another one except by going through all the steps that were used to make
the first one. It therefore is irrelevant whether people are permitted to
copy it--it's impossible.
Books were printed only on printing presses until recently. It was
possible to make a copy yourself by hand, but it wasn't practical because
it took so much more work than using a printing press. And it produced
something so much less attractive that, for all intents and purposes, you
could act as if it were impossible to make books except by mass producing
them. And therefore copyright didn't really take any freedom away from the
reading public. There wasn't anything that a book purchaser could do that
was forbidden by copyright.
But this isn't true for computer programs. It's also not true for tape
cassettes. It's partly false now for books, but it is still true that for
most books it is more expensive and certainly a lot more work to Xerox them
than to buy a copy, and the result is still less attractive. Right now we
are in a period where the situation that made copyright harmless and
acceptable is changing to a situation where copyright will become
destructive and intolerable. So the people who are slandered as "pirates"
are in fact the people who are trying to do something useful that they have
been forbidden to do. The copyright laws are entirely designed to help
people take complete control over the use of some information for their own
good. But they aren't designed to help people who want to make sure that
the information is accessible to the public and stop others from depriving
the public. I think that the law should recognize a class of works that are
owned by the public, which is different from public domain in the same
sense that a public park is different from something found in a garbage
can. It's not there for anybody to take away, it's there for everyone to
use but for no one to impede. Anybody in the public who finds himself being
deprived of the derivative work of something owned by the public should be
able to sue about it.
BYTE: But aren't pirates interested in getting copies of programs because
they want to use those programs, not because they want to use that
knowledge to produce something better?
Stallman: I don't see that that's the important distinction. More people
using a program means that the program contributes more to society. You
have a loaf of bread that could be eaten either once or a million times.
BYTE: Some users buy commercial software to obtain support. How does your
distribution scheme provide support?
Stallman: I suspect that those users are misled and are not thinking
clearly. It is certainly useful to have support, but when they start
thinking about how that has something to do with selling software or with
the software being proprietary, at that point they are confusing
themselves. There is no guarantee that proprietary software will receive
good support. Simply because sellers say that they provide support, that
doesn't mean it will be any good. And they may go out of business. In fact,
people think that GNU EMACS has better support than commercial EMACSes. One
of the reasons is that I'm probably a better hacker than the people who
wrote the other EMACSes, but the other reason is that everyone has sources
and there are so many people interested in figuring out how to do things
with it that you don't have to get your support from me. Even just the free
support that consists of my fixing bugs people report to me and
incorporating that in the next release has given people a good level of
support. You can always hire somebody to solve a problem for you, and when
the software is free you have a competitive market for the support. You can
hire anybody. I distribute a service list with EMACS, a list of people's
names and phone numbers and what they charge to provide support.
BYTE: Do you collect their bug fixes?
Stallman: Well, they send them to me. I asked all the people who wanted to
be listed to promise that they would never ask any of their customers to
keep secret whatever they were told or any changes they were given to the
GNU software as part of that support.
BYTE: So you can't have people competing to provide support based on their
knowing the solution to some problem that somebody else doesn't know.
Stallman: No. They can compete based on their being clever and more likely
to find the solution to your problem, or their already understanding more
of the common problems, or knowing better how to explain to you what you
should do. These are all ways they can compete. They can try to do better,
but they cannot actively impede their competitors.
BYTE: I suppose it's like buying a car. You're not forced to go back to the
original manufacturer for support or continued maintenance.
Stallman: Or buying a house--what would it be like if the only person who
could ever fix problems with your house was the contractor who built it
originally? That is the kind of imposition that's involved in proprietary
software. People tell me about a problem that happens in UNIX. Because
manufacturers sell improved versions of UNIX, they tend to collect fixes
and not give them out except in binaries. The result is that the bugs don't
really get fixed.
BYTE: They're all duplicating effort trying to solve bugs independently.
Stallman: Yes. Here is another point that helps put the problem of
proprietary information in a social perspective. Think about the liability
insurance crisis. In order to get any compensation from society, an injured
person has to hire a lawyer and split the money with that lawyer. This is a
stupid and inefficient way of helping out people who are victims of
accidents. And consider all the time that people put into hustling to take
business away from their competition. Think of the pens that are packaged
in large cardboard packages that cost more than the pen--just to make sure
that the pen isn't stolen. Wouldn't it be better if we just put free pens
on every street corner? And think of all the toll booths that impede the
flow of traffic. It's a gigantic social phenomenon. People find ways of
getting money by impeding society. Once they can impede society, they can
be paid to leave people alone. The waste inherent in owning information
will become more and more important and will ultimately make the difference
between the utopia in which nobody really has to work for a living because
it's all done by robots and a world just like ours where everyone spends
much time replicating what the next fellow is doing.
BYTE: Like typing in copyright notices on the software.
Stallman: More like policing everyone to make sure that they don't have
forbidden copies of anything and duplicating all the work people have
already done because it is proprietary.
BYTE: A cynic might wonder how you earn your living.
Stallman: From consulting. When I do consulting, I always reserve the right
to give away what I wrote for the consulting job. Also, I could be making
my living by mailing copies of the free software that I wrote and some that
other people wrote. Lots of people send in $150 for GNU EMACS, but now this
money goes to the Free Software Foundation that I started. The foundation
doesn't pay me a salary because it would be a conflict of interest.
Instead, it hires other people to work on GNU. As long as I can go on
making a living by consulting I think that's the best way.
BYTE: What is currently included in the official GNU distribution tape?
Stallman: Right now the tape contains GNU EMACS (one version fits all
computers); Bison, a program that replaces YACC; MIT Scheme, which is
Professor Sussman's super-simplified dialect of LISP; and Hack, a
dungeon-exploring game similar to Rogue.
BYTE: Does the printed manual come with the tape as well?
Stallman: No. Printed manuals cost $15 each or copy them yourself. Copy
this interview and share it, too.
BYTE: How can you get a copy of that?
Stallman: Write to the Free Software Foundation, 675 Massachusetts Ave.,
Cambridge, MA 02139.
BYTE: What are you going to do when you are done with the GNU system?
Stallman: I'm not sure. Sometimes I think that what I'll go on to do is the
same thing in other areas of software.
BYTE: So this is just the first of a whole series of assaults on the
software industry?
Stallman: I hope so. But perhaps what I'll do is just live a life of ease
working a little bit of the time just to live. I don't have to live
expensively. The rest of the time I can find interesting people to hang
around with or learn to do things that I don't know how to do.
Editorial Note: BYTE holds the right to provide this interview on BIX but
will not interfere with its distribution.
Richard Stallman, 545 Technology Square, Room 703, Cambridge, MA 02139.
Copyright (C) 1986 Richard Stallman. Permission is granted to make and
distribute copies of this article as long as the copyright and this notice
appear on all copies.
Jim Thompson
(This was found in prep.ai.mit.edu:~ftp/gnu/etc/MOTIVATION.)
Enjoy,
Jim
STUDIES FIND REWARD OFTEN NO MOTIVATOR
Creativity and intrinsic interest diminish if task is done for gain
By Alfie Kohn
Special to the Boston Globe
[reprinted with permission of the author
from the Monday 19 January 1987 Boston Globe]
In the laboratory, rats get Rice Krispies. In the classroom the top
students get A's, and in the factory or office the best workers get
raises. It's an article of faith for most of us that rewards promote
better performance.
But a growing body of research suggests that this law is not nearly as
ironclad as was once thought. Psychologists have been finding that
rewards can lower performance levels, especially when the performance
involves creativity.
A related series of studies shows that intrinsic interest in a task -
the sense that something is worth doing for its own sake - typically
declines when someone is rewarded for doing it.
If a reward - money, awards, praise, or winning a contest - comes to
be seen as the reason one is engaging in an activity, that activity
will be viewed as less enjoyable in its own right.
With the exception of some behaviorists who doubt the very existence
of intrinsic motivation, these conclusions are now widely accepted
among psychologists. Taken together, they suggest we may unwittingly
be squelching interest and discouraging innovation among workers,
students and artists.
The recognition that rewards can have counter-productive effects is
based on a variety of studies, which have come up with such findings
as these: Young children who are rewarded for drawing are less likely
to draw on their own that are children who draw just for the fun of
it. Teenagers offered rewards for playing word games enjoy the games
less and do not do as well as those who play with no rewards.
Employees who are praised for meeting a manager's expectations suffer
a drop in motivation.
Much of the research on creativity and motivation has been performed
by Theresa Amabile, associate professor of psychology at Brandeis
University. In a paper published early last year on her most recent
study, she reported on experiments involving elementary school and
college students. Both groups were asked to make "silly" collages.
The young children were also asked to invent stories.
The least-creative projects, as rated by several teachers, were done
by those students who had contracted for rewards. "It may be that
commissioned work will, in general, be less creative than work that is
done out of pure interest," Amabile said.
In 1985, Amabile asked 72 creative writers at Brandeis and at Boston
University to write poetry. Some students then were given a list of
extrinsic (external) reasons for writing, such as impressing teachers,
making money and getting into graduate school, and were asked to think
about their own writing with respect to these reasons. Others were
given a list of intrinsic reasons: the enjoyment of playing with
words, satisfaction from self-expression, and so forth. A third group
was not given any list. All were then asked to do more writing.
The results were clear. Students given the extrinsic reasons not only
wrote less creatively than the others, as judged by 12 independent
poets, but the quality of their work dropped significantly. Rewards,
Amabile says, have this destructive effect primarily with creative
tasks, including higher-level problem-solving. "The more complex the
activity, the more it's hurt by extrinsic reward," she said.
But other research shows that artists are by no means the only ones
affected.
In one study, girls in the fifth and sixth grades tutored younger
children much less effectively if they were promised free movie
tickets for teaching well. The study, by James Gabarino, now
president of Chicago's Erikson Institute for Advanced Studies in Child
Development, showed that tutors working for the reward took longer to
communicate ideas, got frustrated more easily, and did a poorer job in
the end than those who were not rewarded.
Such findings call into question the widespread belief that money is
an effective and even necessary way to motivate people. They also
challenge the behaviorist assumption that any activity is more likely
to occur if it is rewarded. Amabile says her research "definitely
refutes the notion that creativity can be operantly conditioned."
But Kenneth McGraw, associate professor of psychology at the
University of Mississippi, cautions that this does not mean
behaviorism itself has been invalidated. "The basic principles of
reinforcement and rewards certainly work, but in a restricted context"
- restricted, that is, to tasks that are not especially interesting.
Researchers offer several explanations for their surprising findings
about rewards and performance.
First, rewards encourage people to focus narrowly on a task, to do it
as quickly as possible and to take few risks. "If they feel that
'this is something I hve to get through to get the prize,' the're
going to be less creative," Amabile said.
Second, people come to see themselves as being controlled by the
reward. They feel less autonomous, and this may interfere with
performance. "To the extent one's experience of being
self-determined is limited," said Richard Ryan, associate psychology
professor at the University of Rochester, "one's creativity will be
reduced as well."
Finally, extrinsic rewards can erode intrinsic interest. People who
see themselves as working for money, approval or competitive success
find their tasks less pleasurable, and therefore do not do them as
well.
The last explanation reflects 15 years of work by Ryan's mentor at the
University of Rochester, Edward Deci. In 1971, Deci showed that
"money may work to buy off one's intrinsic motivation for an activity"
on a long-term basis. Ten years later, Deci and his colleagues
demonstrated that trying to best others has the same effect. Students
who competed to solve a puzzle quickly were less likely than those who
were not competing to keep working at it once the experiment was over.
Control plays role
There is general agreement, however, that not all rewards have the
same effect. Offering a flat fee for participating in an experiment -
similar to an hourly wage in the workplace - usually does not reduce
intrinsic motivation. It is only when the rewards are based on
performing a given task or doing a good job at it - analogous to
piece-rate payment and bonuses, respectively - that the problem
develops.
The key, then, lies in how a reward is experienced. If we come to
view ourselves as working to get something, we will no longer find
that activity worth doing in its own right.
There is an old joke that nicely illustrates the principle. An
elderly man, harassed by the taunts of neighborhood children, finally
devises a scheme. He offered to pay each child a dollar if they would
all return Tuesday and yell their insults again. They did so eagerly
and received the money, but he told them he could only pay 25 cents on
Wednesday. When they returned, insulted him again and collected their
quarters, he informed them that Thursday's rate would be just a penny.
"Forget it," they said - and never taunted him again.
Means to and end
In a 1982 study, Stanford psychologist Mark L. Lepper showed that any
task, no matter how enjoyable it once seemed, would be devalued if it
were presented as a means rather than an end. He told a group of
preschoolers they could not engage in one activity they liked until
they first took part in another. Although they had enjoyed both
activities equally, the children came to dislike the task that was a
prerequisite for the other.
It should not be surprising that when verbal feedback is experienced
as controlling, the effect on motivation can be similar to that of
payment. In a study of corporate employees, Ryan found that those who
were told, "Good, you're doing as you /should/" were "significantly
less intrinsically motivated than those who received feedback
informationally."
There's a difference, Ryan says, between saying, "I'm giving you this
reward because I recognize the value of your work" and "You're getting
this reward because you've lived up to my standards."
A different but related set of problems exists in the case of
creativity. Artists must make a living, of course, but Amabile
emphasizes that "the negative impact on creativity of working for
rewards can be minimized" by playing down the significance of these
rewards and trying not to use them in a controlling way. Creative
work, the research suggests, cannot be forced, but only allowed to
happen.
/Alfie Kohn, a Cambridge, MA writer, is the author of "No Contest: The
Case Against Competition," recently published by Houghton Mifflin Co.,
Boston, MA. ISBN 0-395-39387-6. /
Barry Shein
From: j...@splut.conmicro.com (Jay "you ignorant splut!" Maynard)>
>I can have little other interest at the moment, since they're too
>snobbish to write software that could be portable to my machine.
>
>However, the last time the GPL was discussed, the point came up that the
>GPL was specifically written to have the virus-like effect. This is
>indeed evil, since it coerces me into publishing my software under RMS's
>terms, and in furtherance of RMS's goals, if I choose to use RMS's
>tools. This is as evil as communism - for that's exactly what it is.
You know Jay, you're a clown.
These folks write good-quality, useful software, give it away
basically for free. Ok, that bugs you because if you use it you have
to abide by its licensing agreements. Wow!
But...you then gripe holy hell that they're unsavory because they
don't write *free* software for *your* machine. Worse, they refuse to
let you make lots of $$ off their free software on your machine!
Gee, I mean how many folks/companies out there write software that
doesn't run on your machine?
Oh, I guess that's OK because most of them charge lots of money for
the software which doesn't run on your machine. That must excuse it.
And then you call them communists (how quaint)? Why, because RMS,
unlike *other* software vendors (?!), has a licensing agreement with
terms and conditions of use? It *coerces* you? I'm sorry, does someone
have a gun to your head? Is RMS now in control of the police force or
the army something?
I assume the reasons they're communists is because they consider their
software to be their private property to do with as they please?
Including tacking a license onto it that you happen to not like (hint:
*so don't use the software*.)
Are you making the slightest bit of sense?
No.
P.S.
This message Copyright (c) 1989, Barry Shein.
Re-use of any text or part thereof in any manner, printed, electronic
or otherwise immediately obligates the individual and all software
s/he has produced, is producing or ever will produce to all terms and
conditions of the GNU Public License.
Go ahead Jay, respond! MOO-HAH-HAH!!! WE'RE UNDER YOUR BED!!!
--
-Barry Shein
Software Tool & Die, Purveyors to the Trade | b...@world.std.com
1330 Beacon St, Brookline, MA 02146, (617) 739-0202 | {xylogics,uunet}world!bzs
Barry Shein
From: j...@splut.conmicro.com (Jay "you ignorant splut!" Maynard)
>Your 68010 may support GNUware, but it won't run the mountain of PC/DOS
>programs out there; since I make money supporting such, I need that
>capability.
>I'd loooove to go to a 386, but I can't afford the $1500-2000 that
>upgrading the motherboard and Unix would cost me.
Oh, now we're getting down to it. RMS is a communist and a snob
(interesting combination of traits, but your words) because you
can't afford to upgrade your motherboard.
Aw shucks Jay, you're making me cry. Perhaps you should try the
welfare office, there must be some assistance available for the
cpu-handicapped. Is this really your gripe with RMS? That he won't buy
you a '386? Have you ever asked him for one?
OB-ALT.RELIGION.COMPUTERS: A lot of us rational folks have no interest
in running "the mountain of PC/DOS software out there". That's your
typical American "quantity == quality" confusion. Like those cup and a
half of flavor ads from Maxwell House (gee, it must be taste good, it
overflows the cup!) or that Texas must be a great state because, well,
it's so BIG!
Gee, a MOUNTAIN of PC/DOS programs...ya know, it makes me QUIVER!
--------------------
It's Mr. Boyo to you Dylan
>Your 68010 may support GNUware, but it won't run the mountain of PC/DOS
>programs out there; since I make money supporting such, I need that
>capability.
Actually, I had a XT-on-a-card that did quite well, but I traded it
for a voice-mail/answering-machine/a->d/d->a card because I had
no need to run PCwarez....
I wish Motorola's XDOS was available for my machine...
Nate Hess
>I can have little other interest at the moment, since they're too
>snobbish to write software that could be portable to my machine.
Where is it written that the FSF -- or anyone else, for that matter --
has to write software that works on *your* machine? Why aren't you
writing software that works on *mine*?
--woodstock
--
"What I like is when you're looking and thinking and looking
and thinking...and suddenly you wake up." - Hobbes
nh...@dvlseq.oracle.com or ...!uunet!oracle!nhess or (415) 598-3046
Jay you ignorant splut! Maynard
>> ... This [GNU License] is
>>indeed evil, since it coerces me into publishing my software under RMS's
>>terms, and in furtherance of RMS's goals, if I choose to use RMS's
>>tools. This is as evil as communism - for that's exactly what it is.
>philosophy than capitalism, but there is nothing inherently *evil* in
>communism, as theorized. (It has been practiced in a pretty evil manner, I'll
>grant you, but it is apparent from events in Eastern Europe of late that
>communism (socialism) is maturing.)
Actually, about all that is evident in Eastern Europe is that communism
is crumbling, and that people will get freedom eventually.
As for the evil of communism, if you don't think that depriving people
of the rightful fruits of their efforts isn't evil, then I suggest you
try to get slavery reintroduced here.
RMS's legal virus has the exact same effect - it deprives software
authors of the rightful fruits of their efforts, for it forces them to
give their work away if they choose to use his tools.
>The same is true for GNU -- use it and abide by the rules or get your software
>somewhere else. To use a hackneyed expression -- it's a free country.
The problem is people who discover GNUware and think it's great without
realizing their exact obligations. If nothing else, I expect that this
discussion has raised their awareness of the situation.
I also hope to get other authors to not use the GNU Public Virus as the
basis for their copyright notice and license. As another poster said,
authors do a much greater service if they place their stuff in the
public domain, like Henry Spencer and his regexp package.
>For those of us who haven't read Mr Stallman's credo, where can we find a
>copy? Or is it too dangerous to be published? :-)
It's been posted to the net before; I erased my copy, because I didn't
want it to contaminate my hard disk. I suspect that if you were to drop
g...@prep.ai.mit.edu a note, they'd be more than happy to send you a
copy.
Peter da Silva
Any code that uses any amount (however small) of GNU code becomes GNU code.
Given that A/UX and the NeXT are shipped with GNU code, it's all too easy
for some unsuspecting entrepreneur to compile a release of his code on his
new cube. Now he's unknowingly given up his right to sell the fruits of the
past umpteen months of hard work. Sure, you can get around it if you're
forewarned and savvy about system software... but what about the poor slobs
who aren't?
As to the rationale for section 2b, read the associated document: the GNU
manifesto. Richard Stallman has explicitly stated, here and in other places,
that selling software is evil. He has stated that his goal is to use the GNU
copyleft to force people to give away code. The carrot is GNUware, the stick
is the copyleft, and his goals are just plain wrong.
Dave Lawrence
Richard Stallman has explicitly stated, here and in other places,
that selling software is evil.
Prove it. Provide quotes, and don't twist them to suit your meaning.
I just went through the GNU Manifesto, yet again, and no where does he
say this.
The word "sell", or some superset, appears a few times. No where does
he say that the selling of software is evil. No where does the GPL
prohibit selling software.
Geez, Peter. I remember the last time you tried to claim this,
somewhere over in news.misc I think a few months ago. I was left with
the impression that you finally understood this after we discussed it
tersely in mail.
This isn't a total flame against Peter; I have a lot of respect for
his knowledge and experience. I am just amazed that he still
misrepresents the FSF like this. If you don't like GNU, well fine.
Convince others that way, too, if it is your wont. Don't do it by
lying about what is said though.
Dave
--
(setq mail '("ta...@cs.rpi.edu" "ta...@ai.mit.edu" "ta...@rpitsmts.bitnet"))
Jim Thompson
about how evil RMS is, you've been cross posted.)
In article <25770F...@rpi.edu> ta...@cs.rpi.edu (Dave Lawrence) writes:
>In <46...@sugar.hackercorp.com> pe...@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva):
>
> Richard Stallman has explicitly stated, here and in other places,
> that selling software is evil.
>
>Prove it. Provide quotes, and don't twist them to suit your meaning.
>I just went through the GNU Manifesto, yet again, and no where does he
>say this.
He does seem to imply it. Even I have to admit that much.
(I'm still amazed at the lack of response to my posting of all
those GNU articles two days ago. I *know* they got out.
Hell, they all exist at apple, uunet, and lll-winken.)
Stallman says:
----------
Why I Must Write GNU
I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I must
share it with other people who like it. Software sellers want to divide
the users and conquer them, making each user agree not to share with
others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users in this way. I
cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software
license agreement. For years I worked within the Artificial Intelligence
Lab to resist such tendencies and other inhospitalities, but eventually
they had gone too far: I could not remain in an institution where such
things are done for me against my will.
{and later}
GNU will remove operating system software from the realm of competition.
You will not be able to get an edge in this area, but neither will your
competitors be able to get an edge over you. You and they will compete in
other areas, while benefitting mutually in this one. If your business is
selling an operating system, you will not like GNU, but that's tough on
you. If your business is something else, GNU can save you from being
pushed into the expensive business of selling operating systems.
{and later: (In response to a few 'meta-questions'..)}
"Don't programmers deserve a reward for their creativity?"
If anything deserves a reward, it is social contribution. Creativity can
be a social contribution, but only in so far as society is free to use the
results. If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative
programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict
the use of these programs.
"Shouldn't a programmer be able to ask for a reward for his creativity?"
There is nothing wrong with wanting pay for work, or seeking to maximize
one's income, as long as one does not use means that are destructive. But
the means customary in the field of software today are based on
destruction.
Extracting money from users of a program by restricting their use of it is
destructive because the restrictions reduce the amount and the ways that
the program can be used. This reduces the amount of wealth that humanity
derives from the program. When there is a deliberate choice to restrict,
the harmful consequences are deliberate destruction.
----------
>The word "sell", or some superset, appears a few times. No where does
>he say that the selling of software is evil. No where does the GPL
>prohibit selling software.
No, but his idea is that all software should be free, or at least
supported by society.
>Geez, Peter. I remember the last time you tried to claim this,
>somewhere over in news.misc I think a few months ago. I was left with
>the impression that you finally understood this after we discussed it
>tersely in mail.
Peter isn't wrong about Stallman beliving that all software should
be free. Peter (correct me if wrong, Peter) is only upset that
RMS (and others) want to remove the profit from restricting the
use of software.
>This isn't a total flame against Peter; I have a lot of respect for
>his knowledge and experience. I am just amazed that he still
>misrepresents the FSF like this. If you don't like GNU, well fine.
>Convince others that way, too, if it is your wont. Don't do it by
>lying about what is said though.
Most programers that I've met that oppose GNU got into programming for
the monetary rewards, rather than the pure love of programming.
Certainly gaining sustinance from programing is ok. It is work, even
the GNU project pays the people it employs. However, "Extracting money
from users of a program by restricting their use of it is
destructive..." For all the reasons stated above.
RMS writes some more:
-----
The reason a good citizen does not use such destructive means to become
wealthier is that, if everyone did so, we would all become poorer from the
mutual destructiveness. This is Kantian ethics; or, the Golden Rule.
Since I do not like the consequences that result if everyone hoards
information, I am required to consider it wrong for one to do so.
Specifically, the desire to be rewarded for one's creativity does not
justify depriving the world in general of all or part of that creativity.
-----
I have to agree. I don't plan on getting rich fom programming.
Perhaps others do. I feel sorry for them. I certainly wouldn't plan
on becomming rich by delivering mail, or becomming a fireman, or a
policeman. There are ways of becomming wealthy in each of these
occupations. Almost all of these methods are illegal. Why? Because
they are bad for society.
By the way, RMS never implied 'communism'. He does argue for a sort of
software socialism. I agree. (Again.) Why should I have to duplicate
your work? Why should I have to duplicate your work for my
Great-American-Compiler?
I certainly don't want to have to maintain code written by someone who
is in it 'for the money'. I'd much rather use code written by someone
who was in it for much the same reason as someone patents an invention
of any sort. Copyright was invented in a time when copying the product
involved (books) was prohibitivly expensive. Now its been turned into
'intellectual property rights', and its socially bankrupt. Does
society benefit by the current scheme? Would society benefit more if
we all shared our code?
I belive so, therefore I support RMS and the FSF.
If you're a software hoarder, admit it, and then repent. Consider what
your actions are costing society. Consider the pain you endure to
re-write what someone else may already have written (potentially as
well, or better that you're about to write it.) Computers are tools,
we should all be helping build tools. Not fighting each others
efforts in order to make a pile of bread.
Jim
(All quotes from (emacs)/etc/GNU. Titled: The GNU MAnifesto.)
(Which I posted here the other day.)
Steve Lamont
>In article <58...@alvin.mcnc.org> s...@mcnc.org.UUCP (Steve Lamont) writes:
>>In article <#V....@splut.conmicro.com> j...@splut.conmicro.com
(Jay "you ignorant splut!" Maynard) writes:
>>grant you, but it is apparent from events in Eastern Europe of late that
>>communism (socialism) is maturing.)
>
>Actually, about all that is evident in Eastern Europe is that communism
>is crumbling, and that people will get freedom eventually.
Yes, the people of Eastern Europe are throwing off a repressive *political*
regime, but are, for the most part, continuing to maintain a socialist
*economic* system. There is nothing inherent in the *economic* system which
we label as communism that necessarily calls for a repressive political
system.
>As for the evil of communism, if you don't think that depriving people
>of the rightful fruits of their efforts isn't evil, then I suggest you
>try to get slavery reintroduced here.
Red herring.
Communism (in theory, if not in practice) means that *everyone* shares in the
fruits of everyone's labors. Doesn't that seem more equitable to you than
some folks driving around in Mercedes while others push shopping carts
aimlessly around town because they haven't anywhere to live? (See, I can toss
red herrings into the discussion, too :-) )
However, this branch thread of the discussion probably belongs in some other
group or I'll be delighted to carry on the dialog via private email.
>RMS's legal virus has the exact same effect - it deprives software
>authors of the rightful fruits of their efforts, for it forces them to
>give their work away if they choose to use his tools.
Oh, piffle. Some kind soul sent me the EMACS License and GNU Manifesto and in
reading that I can find no particular or general statement that would lead me
to agree with your contention. Perhaps you can enlighten me?
>The problem is people who discover GNUware and think it's great without
>realizing their exact obligations. If nothing else, I expect that this
>discussion has raised their awareness of the situation.
I fear that it has simply muddied the waters. I respectfully suggest that you
back up your assertions with evidence so that we may judge for ourselves.
spl (the p stands for
programming in the
public domain for over
0.1 of a century...)
--
Steve Lamont, sciViGuy EMail: s...@ncsc.org
NCSC, Box 12732, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
"There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We
don't believe this to be a coincidence." || - Jeremy S. Anderson
Peter da Silva
> "Don't programmers deserve a reward for their creativity?"
No, programmers deserve a reward for their time and effort, same as everyone
else...
> If anything deserves a reward, it is social contribution. Creativity can
> be a social contribution, but only in so far as society is free to use the
> results.
Fine.
> If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative
> programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict
> the use of these programs.
*BINGO*. Here we have the core of my opposition to RMS. This isn't quite as
blatant as he gets in real life (he's been reported to say that anyone who
expects to be paid money for writing software is a fascist asshole), but saying
that people should be punished if they restrict the use of the fruits of their
labor is just plain wrong. Evil, if you will.
The following paragraphs get quite Marxist. But it's interesting to note that
today the software most widely used by non-computer-nerds is commercial, with
no relationship to GNU. Freeware and PD software has fallen by the wayside,
and Lotus, Wordstar, and so on are winning the race
And then there are RMS's dubious debating tactics, and his invalid arguments.
I'll touch on a few of them now.
> I could answer that nobody is forced to be a programmer. Most of us cannot
> manage to get any money for standing on the street and making faces.
Standing in the street and making faces doesn't create wealth. Programming
does. If I create wealth I should be rewarded... plain and simple.
> The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors
> frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction. This
> practice was useful, and is the only way many authors' works have survived
> even in part.
But this is under special conditions: no printing press. We're not operating
under those conditions now. You can't use this as a justification for
abandoning copyrights. Conditions have (as he notes elsewhere when talking
about patents) changed.
And remember Mozart. That should be the rallying cry of those opposed to the
GNU mindset: "Remember Mozart".
> The copyright system was created expressly for the purpose
> of encouraging authorship. In the domain for which it was invented--books,
> which could be copied economically only on a printing press--it did little
> harm, and did not obstruct most of the individuals who read the books.
Books can be copied as cheaply as any other document, including program source
code.
> The paradigm of competition is a race: by rewarding the winner, we
> encourage everyone to run faster. When capitalism really works this way,
> it does a good job; but its defenders are wrong in assuming it always works
> this way. If the runners forget why the reward is offered and become
> intent on winning, no matter how, they may find other strategies--such as,
> attacking other runners. If the runners get into a fist fight, they will
> all finish late.
Looks like it's working very well. Compare the quality and general utility
of BDS (closer to freeware) and System V (closer to commercial software). BSD
is full of lots of neat stuff, but it's a hell of a lot harder to learn and
administer than System V. Similarly, Emacs is incomprehensible to a novice,
but commercial editors and word processors are quite easy to use. And they're
getting better all the time.
> Actually, many people will program with absolutely no monetary incentive.
But will they produce Lotus 1-2-3? Hell no.
> For more than ten years, many of the world's best programmers worked at the
> Artificial Intelligence Lab for far less money than they could have had
> anywhere else. They got many kinds of non-monetary rewards: fame and
> appreciation, for example. And creativity is also fun, a reward in itself.
And they're producing software that's totally useless to 90% of the people
who want to actually get something done with computers. You can't make a living
taking in each other's washing.
> A manufacturer introducing a new computer will pay for the porting of
> operating systems onto the new hardware.
Yeh. Look at IBM. You want OS/2 or MS-DOS with that, sir?
And then there's the software tax idea. I'm not even going to address that one
in detail. Ludicrous.
Let's make the post-scarcity world real, first, before we start talking about
crippling the people who are trying to create it.
Peter da Silva
> Stallman: I don't want to see people get rewards for writing
> proprietary software because that is not really a contribution to society.
> BYTE: So this is just the first of a whole series of assaults on the
> software industry?
> Stallman: I hope so.
Now the following is a good freeware copyright notice. I hope you all agree
to put something like this on your software:
> Copyright (C) 1986 Richard Stallman. Permission is granted to make and
> distribute copies of this article as long as the copyright and this notice
> appear on all copies.
Jim Thompson
>
>RMS writes, in the GNU manifesto:
>> "Don't programmers deserve a reward for their creativity?"
That was a question posed in by a 'meta-person'. Not rms.
RMS wrote this:
>No, programmers deserve a reward for their time and effort, same as everyone
>else...
>> If anything deserves a reward, it is social contribution. Creativity can
>> be a social contribution, but only in so far as society is free to use the
>> results.
>Fine.
So, you agree! :-) Then why are we argueing?
>> If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative
>> programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict
>> the use of these programs.
>*BINGO*. Here we have the core of my opposition to RMS. This isn't quite as
>blatant as he gets in real life (he's been reported to say that anyone who
>expects to be paid money for writing software is a fascist asshole), but saying
>that people should be punished if they restrict the use of the fruits of their
>labor is just plain wrong. Evil, if you will.
First, you're quoting him without the benefit of anything beyond
hearsay. I hear you said you wanted to overthrow the US government.
See. Same thing.. "Someone said that someone said.." is no basis for judgement.
RMS gets paid money for writting software. He consults for a living.
However, this important distiction needs to be made.
-----
BYTE: A cynic might wonder how you earn your living.
Stallman: From consulting. When I do consulting, I always reserve the right
to give away what I wrote for the consulting job. Also, I could be making
my living by mailing copies of the free software that I wrote and some that
other people wrote. Lots of people send in $150 for GNU EMACS, but now this
money goes to the Free Software Foundation that I started. The foundation
doesn't pay me a salary because it would be a conflict of interest.
Instead, it hires other people to work on GNU. As long as I can go on
making a living by consulting I think that's the best way.
-----
So, rms makes a living writting code. So do you (I assume.) The difference?
rms shares what he writes with everyone. Do you?
Also, I've never heard RMS call anyone a fascist asshole. I've smashed
crab with the man. We had a hearty talk about Free Software. There were
even some who opposed his politics in the dinner party. Not once did
the discussion break down into namecalling.
>The following paragraphs get quite Marxist. But it's interesting to note that
>today the software most widely used by non-computer-nerds is commercial, with
>no relationship to GNU. Freeware and PD software has fallen by the wayside,
>and Lotus, Wordstar, and so on are winning the race
>
>And then there are RMS's dubious debating tactics, and his invalid arguments.
>I'll touch on a few of them now.
>
>> I could answer that nobody is forced to be a programmer. Most of us cannot
>> manage to get any money for standing on the street and making faces.
>
>Standing in the street and making faces doesn't create wealth. Programming
>does. If I create wealth I should be rewarded... plain and simple.
I suppose we should do away with street mimes? Society has almost always
reguarded the artist as a treasured object, to be nurtured with public
funds. Scientists too. Why not computer programmers?
The question I ask is, were it not for your greed, why should society
reward you for creating wealth? Why not rather view your participation
in society as your reward?
>> The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors
>> frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction. This
>> practice was useful, and is the only way many authors' works have survived
>> even in part.
>
>But this is under special conditions: no printing press. We're not operating
>under those conditions now. You can't use this as a justification for
>abandoning copyrights. Conditions have (as he notes elsewhere when talking
>about patents) changed.
>
>And remember Mozart. That should be the rallying cry of those opposed to the
>GNU mindset: "Remember Mozart".
I think this needs further explaination. Are you proposing that we
conspire to copyright Mozart? Foo!
>> The copyright system was created expressly for the purpose
>> of encouraging authorship. In the domain for which it was invented--books,
>> which could be copied economically only on a printing press--it did little
>> harm, and did not obstruct most of the individuals who read the books.
>Books can be copied as cheaply as any other document, including program source
>code.
No, you're wrong. There is more 'hard cost' in coping a book that there is
source code. If nothing else, the trees in the rain forests.
>> The paradigm of competition is a race: by rewarding the winner, we
>> encourage everyone to run faster. When capitalism really works this way,
>> it does a good job; but its defenders are wrong in assuming it always works
>> this way. If the runners forget why the reward is offered and become
>> intent on winning, no matter how, they may find other strategies--such as,
>> attacking other runners. If the runners get into a fist fight, they will
>> all finish late.
>Looks like it's working very well. Compare the quality and general utility
>of BDS (closer to freeware) and System V (closer to commercial software). BSD
>is full of lots of neat stuff, but it's a hell of a lot harder to learn and
>administer than System V. Similarly, Emacs is incomprehensible to a novice,
>but commercial editors and word processors are quite easy to use. And they're
>getting better all the time.
And what of the unification of BSD and SV? What then?
You state that "Emacs is incomprehensible to a novice." I shout "Foo!".
I've taught emacs to children in the 4th grade, Innumerable boy scouts,
and a plethoria of managers. Emacs too, is getting better all the time.
>> Actually, many people will program with absolutely no monetary incentive.
>
>But will they produce Lotus 1-2-3? Hell no.
And why not? The original 'VisiCalc' (which predates 1-2-3 by years),
was a great hack, that nobody thought would sell. If I could get the
code for 1-2-3, it would be an 'X' application in a short amount of time,
and I'd *give* it to the world. Its a good utility, I agree.
Obviously what we need is a spreadsheet in elisp. (Now there is a great hack!)
If there existed a 'gnu-1-2-3', what then? What would you complain
about next, Peter?
I belive that the reason most of the business world has not yet caught on
to gnu-ware is the simple fact that these users have yet to aquire the
hardware necessary to run these programs. The reason that FSF has yet
to write the 'great-american-spreadsheet', (apologies to all my overseas
friends, in case its non-obvious, these are all refs to the phrase,
"The Great American Novel." and aren't meant to imply that USA technology
is any better than non-USA tech.), is mostly that they're still in the
'building enabling technology' stage. Once the kernel, compiler, debugger,
and 'user interface' (emacs/bash) are done, then work can progress toward
providing the 'users' with the tools they need to work/play.
Some software companies are starting *NOT* to copy protect their
wares. A few are starting to catch-on that it costs them nothing to
do so, since the 'pirates' (freedom fighters?) will just break the
protection that cost so much to develop or purchase.
>> For more than ten years, many of the world's best programmers worked at the
>> Artificial Intelligence Lab for far less money than they could have had
>> anywhere else. They got many kinds of non-monetary rewards: fame and
>> appreciation, for example. And creativity is also fun, a reward in itself.
>And they're producing software that's totally useless to 90% of the people
>who want to actually get something done with computers. You can't make a living
>taking in each other's washing.
The Media Lab is working on things that you can only dream about.
They're future tech. The AI lab (and SAIL) were also about cutting
edge tech, not garden variety editing. Back when EMACS was written, it
was an amazing bit of work. (still is.) Me thinks you need to visit
the Lab(s) before making judgements.
>> A manufacturer introducing a new computer will pay for the porting of
>> operating systems onto the new hardware.
>
>Yeh. Look at IBM. You want OS/2 or MS-DOS with that, sir?
I imagine that IBM paid quite dearly for DOS and OS/2.
I can't even being to imagine what AIX is costing them.
This is an interesting point. When the RISC computer becomes a
commodity item. (i.e. you can go to Sears and buy a 50-Mip (xxxx)
computer with .5 Gig of disk and 16Mb of memory, a nice display and
all the other goodies for $5k, what then? If you think the major
players in the workstation market aren't aiming at consumers, you'ld
better wake up. If you think this is more than 2 or 3 years away,
you're in for an (un?)pleasant shock. Once this happens, its all
software issues. ('Till the software once again overwhelms the hardware.)
Will users want to purchase a $1k OS for their computer? Or one that
can be gotten down the street at the local user-group for free?
>And then there's the software tax idea. I'm not even going to address that one
>in detail. Ludicrous.
I think its probably comming, perhaps for the wrong reason.
Government taxes your gasoline, your property, your food, and
the purchases you make, why not your computer? Sounds like
a great revenue enhancement to me.. It might actually help fund
the NSF. Politicians itch for unique new ways to collect revenue.
>Let's make the post-scarcity world real, first, before we start talking about
>crippling the people who are trying to create it.
But if you're creating the post-scarcity world by creating scarcity,
you're fighting yourself!
Jim Thompson - Network Engineering - Sun Microsystems - jth...@central.sun.com
Member of the Fatalistic International Society for Hedonistic Youth (FISHY)
"Unemployment is the solution, not the problem." -- B.I.R.D.
Jay you ignorant splut! Maynard
his article directly, since it carried a stupid licensing restriction; I
have no desire to test its enforceability, however.
You claimed that I was bugged that I would have to abide by the GNU
Public Virus if I wished to use GNUware. That's not it at all...I object
to the license itself. Yes, they are reputed to write good-quality
software; I can't tell. They don't give it away basically for free: they
demand that you join their effort. Sorry, but I'm not interested in
joining their communistic utopia. I'll give it away - no strings
attached.
I also don't like their adamant refusal to follow commonly held good
programming practices - like not treating integers and pointers as
interchangeable - just because it would help make their bloated code
more likely to run on my smaller machine.
I call them communists because they wish to force the world to give away
their code for free; since they can't do that to everyone, they'll do
the next best thing: they attach a condition to their software forcing
those who use their code to give their work away for free.
I'm sorry you got offended that I used communist as an insult; your
positions in the past lead me to believe that you would like to see
communism as the system here as well. Sorry, it doesn't work that way.
True public domain code is freedom. GNU Public Virus-licensed code is
communism.
Jay you ignorant splut! Maynard
>In article <#V....@splut.conmicro.com>, jay@splut (Jay "you ignorant splut!" Maynard) writes:
>>I can have little other interest at the moment, since they're too
>>snobbish to write software that could be portable to my machine.
>Where is it written that the FSF -- or anyone else, for that matter --
>has to write software that works on *your* machine? Why aren't you
>writing software that works on *mine*?
I don't expect them to write software that works on my system unaltered.
I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that they write software that can
be ported to my system without a complete rewrite.
GNUware is full of portability violations: things like assuming all ints
are 32 bits, or that pointers and ints are interchangeable. That kind of
thing. Instead of avoiding this kind of crud, they say, "Get a better
processor!" Horse hockey. If they wrote portable code, I wouldn't have a
complaint...about that. The GNU Public Virus still rankles.
jim frost
>As for the evil of communism, if you don't think that depriving people
>of the rightful fruits of their efforts isn't evil, then I suggest you
>try to get slavery reintroduced here.
Communism is not the deprivation of an individual from the fruits of
his efforts, but the gift of an individual to the whole society. In
theory this would be the perfect society. In reality individual greed
breaks down the whole system.
To the communist, your point of view is as criminal as you feel theirs
is. Personally I believe in Open Software for Open Minds but the
realist in me realizes that that cannot always be the case. There is
room for both in our society and I applaud GNU for their efforts.
Happy hacking,
jim frost
ma...@std.com
It's Mr. Boyo to you Dylan
Foist off, I had to knock out most of the References line, because
it only takes a few 21 character message id's to crash rn. :-)
In article <46...@sugar.hackercorp.com> pe...@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>But it's interesting to note that
>today the software most widely used by non-computer-nerds is commercial, with
>no relationship to GNU. Freeware and PD software has fallen by the wayside,
>and Lotus, Wordstar, and so on are winning the race
Yep. Blandness sells. Look at the Mac. (and the Amiga..) :-)
(Reload with grapeshot, Mr. Robbins!)
>RMS:
>> Actually, many people will program with absolutely no monetary incentive.
>But will they produce Lotus 1-2-3? Hell no.
And they'll also produce release 2.0 of AT&T's C++ compiler, which is
still fucking far from Stroustroup (sic?). g++ on the other hand, is a much
better c++ compiler, produced mostly by people just wanting to get
the job done.
I don't agree with all of the tenets of the Manifesto, and I don't
like some of RMS's ideas in the slightest. However, he makes tools we
desperately need (and *would* pay money for, but nobody has decided
to write working ones yet..).
Does the Manifesto apply to text written with RMS's emacs? How
about code transported via GNUtar?
The code we need is not being written by the big powerhouse computer
companies who claim that they can meet any need.
Also, g++ is on about three different systems we use, and code
transportability is really useful. (Like I need to tell *you* that. :-)
Finally, my salary, and the salaries of my coworkers, come out of
*your* tax dollars. The code we produce belongs to the "public trust",
ergo we don't need to worry about who can't and doesn't own our code.
(It's just implementations of unproven algorhithms, anyway... :-)
It's Mr. Boyo to you Dylan
>> BYTE: So this is just the first of a whole series of assaults on the
>> software industry?
>> Stallman: I hope so.
Just a note: RMS was quesitoned by the FBI as part of the investigation
into the Nu Prometheus League...
Give me a break.
Byron Rakitzis
Jay "you ignorant splut!" Maynard (j...@splut.conmicro.com) writes:
>You claimed that I was bugged that I would have to abide by the GNU
>Public Virus if I wished to use GNUware. That's not it at all...I object
>to the license itself. Yes, they are reputed to write good-quality
>software; I can't tell. They don't give it away basically for free: they
>demand that you join their effort. Sorry, but I'm not interested in
>joining their communistic utopia. I'll give it away - no strings
>attached.
You sure can't. It seems you can't read either. Before you post more
of this redneck spluttering, please read the Manifesto or indeed get
yourself informed about the issue in any way you please. Just make
sure you get the facts straight.
>their code for free; since they can't do that to everyone, they'll do
>the next best thing: they attach a condition to their software forcing
>those who use their code to give their work away for free.
Yeah, right.
--
"C Code."
"C Code run."
"Run, Code, run!"
Byron Rakitzis. (tbra...@phoenix.princeton.edu ---- tbra...@pucc.bitnet)
Greg Lindahl
> That's not it at all...I object
> to the license itself. Yes, they are reputed to write good-quality
> software; I can't tell. They don't give it away basically for free: they
> demand that you join their effort. Sorry, but I'm not interested in
> joining their communistic utopia. I'll give it away - no strings
> attached.
OK, why don't you show how using GNU Fgrep forces you to join the GNU
Utopia? Show how using GNU Chess forces you to join the GNU Utopia.
Show how using GCC as a translator of your source code to assembler
forces you to join the GNU Utopia.
The fact is that you don't understand the GNU Public License at all.
------
Greg Lindahl
Jay you ignorant splut! Maynard
>Most programers that I've met that oppose GNU got into programming for
>the monetary rewards, rather than the pure love of programming.
>Certainly gaining sustinance from programing is ok. It is work, even
>the GNU project pays the people it employs. However, "Extracting money
>from users of a program by restricting their use of it is
>destructive..." For all the reasons stated above.
I guess I'm not "most programmers", then. I got into it because I love to
do it, and because I'm reasonably good at it. It's not my fault that
there are people out there who pay good money for me to do it...
The GNU philosophy, though, says that I cannot be compensated for the
exercise of my creativity, because that harms society. This is pure and
utter hogwash. If I am not compensated for my creativity, I have little
incentive to create, and none to let others into my creation, the
pseudopsychologicalBS posted here recently notwithstanding. I love
programming, and have (and will) contributed to the public domain most
of my work that's been useful to more than myself. This is only possible
because I have been able to be compensated by others for the rest of my
work.
>If you're a software hoarder, admit it, and then repent. Consider what
>your actions are costing society. Consider the pain you endure to
>re-write what someone else may already have written (potentially as
>well, or better that you're about to write it.) Computers are tools,
>we should all be helping build tools. Not fighting each others
>efforts in order to make a pile of bread.
If we do not have the opportunity to sell our tools, then the production
of tools will be restricted to people who produce tools because they
want to. The set of available tools will be drastically reduced in such
a world.
Peter da Silva
> Yep. Blandness sells. Look at the Mac. (and the Amiga..) :-)
> (Reload with grapeshot, Mr. Robbins!)
Look at the IBM-PC. You're right. Blandness sells.
> And they'll also produce release 2.0 of AT&T's C++ compiler, which is
> still fucking far from Stroustroup (sic?). g++ on the other hand, is a much
> better c++ compiler, produced mostly by people just wanting to get
> the job done.
Compilers are sexy.
> Does the Manifesto apply to text written with RMS's emacs? How
> about code transported via GNUtar?
No, but it does apply to code linked with a GNU runtime, sich as the BISON
skeleton. And if fonts were copyrightable it'd probably cover text formatted
with Ghostscript.
> Finally, my salary, and the salaries of my coworkers, come out of
> *your* tax dollars. The code we produce belongs to the "public trust",
> ergo we don't need to worry about who can't and doesn't own our code.
So you should use what amounts to a modified version of the copyleft. Just
take the virus out of paragraph 2b.
I use a similar copyright notice on my freeware code. It says, in effect, that
you may use the code for any purpose so long as you don't claim authorship,
that you retain the copyright notice, and you make the original source (not
necessarily the source with your own modifications) available under no stronger
copyright than you received it with.
That's a hell of a lot less restrictive than the GNU notice. Except for one
thing: it prevents you from putting it under the GNU copyleft. That would
violate the "no stronger copyright" part.
Jay you ignorant splut! Maynard
>use any piece of software that the FSF produces. WHY?
I'm saying that, instead of deliberately making their code
difficult-to-impossible to port, they could use a few well-known items
of good programming style and make my job a lot easier. I don't expect
to have their code compile on my system unaltered. I would like to be
able to run their code, even if some work were needed.
>Saying "there's no hope at all for that" [having a "less buggy C
>compiler than Microbug's"] *because* gcc doesn't work on your machine is
>not only silly, it's bordering on stupid. Where is the C compiler that
>*you've* been working on? Instead of bitching about the compiler that
>RMS chose to write, why don't you write one that *does* suit you? And,
>supposing you wrote such a compiler, how would you feel if RMS began
>publically bitching about the fact that your compiler worked on your
>PC/DOS machine and a VAX, say, but not on a SPARC or a MIPS or an i860?
I'm not a compiler author. I haven't the foggiest notion of how to
begin, much less how to make it turn out decent code. If I had a
compiler that I was writing, though, and chose not to sell it (which I'd
strongly consider, given the number of problems with Microbug), I'd
write it so that it *could* be easily ported, instead of just saying,
"Well, your machine is too crippled, so the hell with you."
>You've made a choice. Learn to live with it, or make a different
>choice. Quit complaining about choices that others have made.
I'm not complaining about others' choices; I'm complaining about
processor snobbery that other people indulge in because of the choice I
made.
Peter da Silva
> First, you're quoting him without the benefit of anything beyond
> hearsay. I hear you said you wanted to overthrow the US government.
> See. Same thing.. "Someone said that someone said.." is no basis for judgement.
That's true. But he still says that people should be punished for restricting
the use of their programs. In black and white. (or in my case blue and white)
> So, rms makes a living writting code. So do you (I assume.) The difference?
> rms shares what he writes with everyone. Do you?
No. I share a lot of what I write. I sell some. I do some work under a standard
employment contract. I have shareware out there too.
So?
> >Standing in the street and making faces doesn't create wealth. Programming
> >does. If I create wealth I should be rewarded... plain and simple.
> I suppose we should do away with street mimes?
Now how do you get that out of what I said?
> Society has almost always
> reguarded the artist as a treasured object, to be nurtured with public
> funds. Scientists too. Why not computer programmers?
They are. And artists are also nurtured with private funds, and hold copyrights
on their work. Why not programmers?
Once upon a time that wasn't so, by the way, and Mozart died a pauper.
> The question I ask is, were it not for your greed, why should society
> reward you for creating wealth? Why not rather view your participation
> in society as your reward?
What do *you* do for a living? Do you create wealth? Do you get rewarded for
it?
> >And remember Mozart. That should be the rallying cry of those opposed to the
> >GNU mindset: "Remember Mozart".
> I think this needs further explaination. Are you proposing that we
> conspire to copyright Mozart? Foo!
See above. Mozart was the greatest composer of his time, but he died a pauper
because he couldn't control the fruits of his labors... his intellectual
property. He lived from contracting: writing scores for people and teaching.
It didn't work then, and it won't work now.
>
> No, you're wrong. There is more 'hard cost' in coping a book that there is
> source code. If nothing else, the trees in the rain forests.
Not at all. The paper isn't copyrighted. The words are. And they fit on a disk
just as easily as any other information.
> And what of the unification of BSD and SV? What then?
What of it? You mean the unification of SunOS and System V? That will end up
with System V.4, a larger and probably buggier product than System V.3.
> You state that "Emacs is incomprehensible to a novice." I shout "Foo!".
> I've taught emacs to children in the 4th grade, Innumerable boy scouts,
> and a plethoria of managers. Emacs too, is getting better all the time.
Any anyone can sit down and use MacWrite in 5 minutes.
> If there existed a 'gnu-1-2-3', what then? What would you complain
> about next, Peter?
The fact that GNU-2-3 took up 2 megabytes in a 640K computer?
No, there *are* PD spreasheets. And they're nothing much. Because doing
a good spreadsheet and getting it right is (a) not much fun and (b) isn't
going to get lots of acclamations from other hackers.
> Some software companies are starting *NOT* to copy protect their
> wares. A few are starting to catch-on that it costs them nothing to
> do so, since the 'pirates' (freedom fighters?) will just break the
> protection that cost so much to develop or purchase.
That's an unfair debating tactic. I've never advocated copy protection for
anything but games. And only for games because they have a lifespan of
about 6 months, after which they don't sell any more, and that's about how
long a good copy protection scheme will hold sales up.
> >Yeh. Look at IBM. You want OS/2 or MS-DOS with that, sir?
> I imagine that IBM paid quite dearly for DOS and OS/2.
> I can't even being to imagine what AIX is costing them.
And all three have negative value to society.
> Will users want to purchase a $1k OS for their [cheap workstation]? Or one
> that can be gotten down the street at the local user-group for free?
They'll buy a $250 OS for their computer, though. And it'll be more like
OS/2 than GNU.
> >Let's make the post-scarcity world real, first, before we start talking about
> >crippling the people who are trying to create it.
> But if you're creating the post-scarcity world by creating scarcity,
> you're fighting yourself!
Nope, I'm creating wealth, by not fighting the invisible hand. It's real, you
know, no matter what Richard Stallman thinks.
I believe that paragraph 2b of the GNU copyright has a negative value for
society. So who's fighting themselves?
Thant Tessman
> In article <#V....@splut.conmicro.com> j...@splut.conmicro.com (Jay
"you ignorant splut!" Maynard) writes:
> >indeed evil, since it coerces me into publishing my software under RMS's
> >terms, and in furtherance of RMS's goals, if I choose to use RMS's
> >tools. This is as evil as communism - for that's exactly what it is.
>
> Oh, PUH-leeeze! This is in no way *evil*. It may represent a different
> philosophy than capitalism, but there is nothing inherently *evil* in
> communism, as theorized. (It has been practiced in a pretty evil
manner, I'll
> communism (socialism) is maturing.)
'Maturing'? That's an interesting way of putting it.
>
> However, I stray from the point somewhat. If RMS is somehow coercing
*anyone*
> to use the products of his industry, it has somehow slipped past my notice.
> It's like the "shrink wrap" agreement that we're all now familiar with. If
> you agree with the rules, then, fine, go ahead and open the package and use
> the software. If not, return the package unopened and get your money back.
I would like to add that this is sometimes called a 'contract.' What could
be more capitalist?
>
> The same is true for GNU -- use it and abide by the rules or get your
software
> somewhere else. To use a hackneyed expression -- it's a free country.
People don't seem to be noticing that as Eastern Europe is moving toward
freedom, the U.S. is moving away from it. A relevant example is of the
movement to start regulating and liscencing programmers. If ever there
was a subject most likely to waste money, time, and energy generating
gobs and gobs of meaningless noise, this is it.
And while I'm at it:
Who gives a flying fuck if emacs is better than vi? Everyone knows they
both suck large rocks, but nobody's bothered to come up with anything
better. Or if they have, no one cares because the DoD has outlawed it
or something.
Same goes for UNIX vs VMS.
I hereby propose that we, the here gathered congregation at the glowing
alter of the CRT, have a bigger mission than just fingering the rosaries of
the keyboard. The future is calling, and everyone seems to have packed
way too much baggage.
What alegence do we owe the puss-swolen boil of X? What basic
biological need could a UNIX possibly satisfy? What does IBM offer
except the debt for the sins of the fathers? What has QWERTY done for
you lately?
Throw off your chains, for they will drag you under! There are gospels
yet to be written, and WE are the prophets!
thant
Steve Lamont
>know, no matter what Richard Stallman thinks.
What's all this crap about "creating wealth?" How about creating beauty or
trying to find truth or doing something because it does society some good?
Personally, I think the "invisible hand" gives most of us the finger and we
should give it the finger right back.
Creating wealth creates Donald Trump. Creating beauty creates "Eine Kleine
Nachtmusick" (sp?). I'll take the latter any day even if I do end up in a
pauper's grave. And I can take satisfaction in knowing that when Donald
Trump, or any of the others who "create wealth" (ugh! what a Reaganite
phrase), die, they'll be just as dead as me, Mozart, or anyone else.
spl (the p stands for
pauper)
Peter da Silva
you like to let just anyone dig into your accounts, income tax returns, and so
on?
If you strip all the free-flow-of-information stuff out, GNU philosophy boils
down to this one statement:
"The price of a good should be no more than the marginal cost of production of
a good, regardless of the fixed costs."
How could anyone disagree with that?
Mark Meyer
>Just a note: RMS was quesitoned by the FBI as part of the investigation
>into the Nu Prometheus League...
What's a Nu Prometheus League?
--
Mark Meyer USENET: {ut-sally!im4u,convex!smu,sun!texsun}!ti-csl!mmeyer
Texas Instruments, Inc. CSNET : mmeyer@TI-CSL
Every day, Jerry Junkins is grateful that I don't speak for TI.
"A verb, Senator! We need a verb!"
Jay you ignorant splut! Maynard
>You sure can't. It seems you can't read either. Before you post more
>of this redneck spluttering, please read the Manifesto or indeed get
>yourself informed about the issue in any way you please. Just make
>sure you get the facts straight.
I _have_ read the Manifesto, twice now: I reread it when Jim Thompson
reposted it a few days ago. I was as revolted the second time as I was
the first.
Jon Watte
>"The price of a good should be no more than the marginal cost of production of
>a good, regardless of the fixed costs."
>How could anyone disagree with that?
Yeah, sure ! So the first guy who came along payed you $10,000,000
for the analyzing software you and 10 employees have been working on
for two years, and the next guy gets it for free, because he had a
disk with him.
Sure.
Any day now.
--
-- Stay alert ! - Trust noone ! - Keep your laser handy ! ---
h...@nada.kth.se == h...@proxxi.se == Jon Watte
longer .sig available on request
Peter Glen Berger
> today the software most widely used by non-computer-nerds is commercial, with
> no relationship to GNU. Freeware and PD software has fallen by the wayside,
> and Lotus, Wordstar, and so on are winning the race
Perhaps that's because people who don't know anything about what they
are going to be purchasing/using are more easily manipulated by
marketing experts. Here lies the main inefficiency-generator in any
capitalist economics system: it is the best marketed products that
succeed, rather than the best products.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pete Berger || ARPA: Pete....@andrew.cmu.edu
Professional Student || BITNET: R746PB1P@CMCCVB
Carnegie-Mellon University || NEXUS@DRYCAS
Do not attend this college. || UUCP: ...!harvard!andrew.cmu.edu!pb1p
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"If only I could/make a deal with god/and get him to swap our places..."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter da Silva
> >Nope, I'm creating wealth, by not fighting the invisible hand. It's real, you
> >know, no matter what Richard Stallman thinks.
> What's all this crap about "creating wealth?"
> Creating wealth creates Donald Trump.
Nonsense. Donald Trump shuffles tokens that represent resources. He doesn't
create any new resources. Richard Stallman creates wealth. I create wealth.
We create useful things out of nothing.
> Creating beauty creates "Eine Kleine
> Nachtmusick" (sp?).
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik is wealth.
> And I can take satisfaction in knowing that when Donald
> Trump, or any of the others who "create wealth" (ugh! what a Reaganite
Try Buckminster Fullerite.
> phrase), die, they'll be just as dead as me, Mozart, or anyone else.
What has Donald Trump created? He;s spent money that has enabled others to
create wealth, by assigning resources in exchange for the new goods they
have produced.
Michael Bender
>today the software most widely used by non-computer-nerds is commercial, with
>no relationship to GNU. Freeware and PD software has fallen by the wayside,
^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Race? Sure, the race where all the entrants have only one leg, that
leg only has one toe, and the runners are all comatose. Yep, that's
the kind of race I want to be in. Lotus?? Don't talk to me about
the product that Mitch Kapor ripped off from Visicalc and didn't even
have the decency to ask, and charges $300 - $500 for a piece of crap
that doesn't run correctly on a network because of all the implicit
assumptions that Lotus, Inc. makes about how your system is set up
and the copy protection schemes it implements. I run Supercalc, and it
runs on my CP/M system, my non-PC-DOS MS-DOS system (DEC Rainbow-100),
my PC, and my various U*IX boxes. Lotus can't say that. But then,
they cater to the samer type of people that buy beemers and car phones.
Wordstar is a good product, but then again I can run it on CP/M,
non-PC-DOS AND PC-DOS machines. I use JOVE and EMACS now, because
I like their features, and since I develop code on several different
machines, I like having one editor that works across all my development
environments.
>(some blah blah about Capitalism...)
>Looks like it's working very well. Compare the quality and general utility
>of BSD (closer to freeware) and System V (closer to commercial software). BSD
>is full of lots of neat stuff, but it's a hell of a lot harder to learn and
>administer than System V. Similarly, Emacs is incomprehensible to a novice,
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
EMACS/JOVE can be customized with function key bindings and macros that
make them similar to commercial editors (they are NOT word processors),
which in fact I've done on several occasions for users that couldn't
get vi or EDLIN or EDT to do what they wanted to do, and neede a more
powerfull editor, but were intimidated by all the key bindings. It works
very well byt just spending a few minutes of your time (at $50/hour, right??)
educating the user, rather than the "open the box and read the manual"
approach that many anal-retentive system administrators and so-called
programming "gods" like to do, then they get pissed when the user can't
use the software they've written/ported.
>but commercial editors and word processors are quite easy to use. And they're
>getting better all the time.
Sure, so is a bicycle, but how long and with how much effort does it
take you on a bike to go from LA to San Fransisco? I mean, you
COULD do it...
>But will they produce Lotus 1-2-3? Hell no.
Who cares? Will I produce a thermonuclear device and explode it
in Manhatten? Your question is obviously a rhetorical one.
In summary, just go back to your PC and enjoy yourself opening all
the shrink-wrap licensed software that you or your company paid
well over what it was worth, the rest of us will get on with our
lives and not resort to generating such drivel on the net. Which,
by the way, comes from the same school of thought that EMACS and all
the other PD stuff you so quickly dismiss comes from. Maybe you should
run netnews on your Novell-connected PC network and have a discussion
with your local printer spooler.
mike
------------------------------------------------------------------------
michael bender - bender@sun AMA # 511250
415 336-6353 (w) 415 941-3864 (h) (SPACE AVAILABLE FOR RENT)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Lindahl
>If you strip all the free-flow-of-information stuff out, GNU philosophy boils
>down to this one statement:
>
>"The price of a good should be no more than the marginal cost of production of
>a good, regardless of the fixed costs."
Wrong. Consider the discussion in the manifesto concerning the difference
between a book and a computer program. GNU Philosophy doesn't say what
you think it says.
Why don't you try understanding what you are trying to bash?
------
Greg Lindahl
Rich Skrenta
>
> What's all this crap about "creating wealth?" How about creating beauty or
> trying to find truth or doing something because it does society some good?
> Personally, I think the "invisible hand" gives most of us the finger and we
> should give it the finger right back.
Creating wealth means more consumer goods, raising the standard of living,
and (hopefully) less work necessary to sustain oneself. Searching for
beauty and truth is fine, but I don't want my hard work to subsidize you
sitting on a couch trying to attain enlightenment.
> Creating wealth creates Donald Trump. Creating beauty creates "Eine Kleine
> Nachtmusick" (sp?).
Creating wealth creates roads, toasters, computers, medicines and Diet Coke.
Sounds like you'd enjoy being a peasant farmer in a nation of artists and
philosophers.
> And I can take satisfaction in knowing that when Donald
> Trump, or any of the others who "create wealth" (ugh! what a Reaganite
> phrase), die, they'll be just as dead as me, Mozart, or anyone else.
Well, that's a comfort...
Rich
--
skr...@blekko.uucp
"Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow
to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon."
-- Winston Churchill
Thant Tessman
> In article <0PAHP:@splut.conmicro.com> j...@splut.conmicro.com (Jay
"you ignorant splut!" Maynard) writes:
> >As for the evil of communism, if you don't think that depriving people
> >of the rightful fruits of their efforts isn't evil, then I suggest you
> >try to get slavery reintroduced here.
>
> Red herring.
Actually it is right on the nose.
>
> Communism (in theory, if not in practice) means that *everyone* shares in the
> fruits of everyone's labors.
More specifically, it means that no one has the right to own anything.
(Who gets to decide who owns what is an implementation detail,
which is what gives you socialism, communism, facism, nazism,
or to a smaller degree what is mistakenly called capitalism here, etc.)
> Doesn't that seem more equitable to you than
> some folks driving around in Mercedes while others push shopping carts
> aimlessly around town because they haven't anywhere to live? (See, I
can toss
> red herrings into the discussion, too :-) )
In other words, socialism is better because it makes everybody equally poor.
> However, this branch thread of the discussion probably belongs in some other
> group or I'll be delighted to carry on the dialog via private email.
No such luck.
GNU *owns* GNU software and therefore they can attach any
braindead conditions to it that they want to. The ability to *own*
something is capitalist. If Stallman's rhetoric sounds socialist, one
must realize that the big difference between socialism and GNU
is that you can choose whether or not to use GNU and they can
choose the manner in which they offer it.
> >RMS's legal virus has the exact same effect - it deprives software
> >authors of the rightful fruits of their efforts, for it forces them to
> >give their work away if they choose to use his tools.
>
> Oh, piffle. Some kind soul sent me the EMACS License and GNU
Manifesto and in
> reading that I can find no particular or general statement that would lead me
> to agree with your contention. Perhaps you can enlighten me?
More specifically, it says they can't *sell* their software.
Hasn't this discussion happened before?
thant
Greg Lindahl
accidentally deleted says:
> Peter isn't wrong about Stallman beliving that all software should
> be free. Peter (correct me if wrong, Peter) is only upset that
> RMS (and others) want to remove the profit from restricting the
> use of software.
Actually, Peter makes the following incorrect leap of faith:
"Because RMS believes selling software is evil, he leads a movement to
make selling software illegal."
This leap of faith is incorrect without proof; it's the same thing
as assuming that I want to outlaw meat consumption because I'm
a vegatarian. After all, I believe that eating meat is unethical...
No, the reality is that I live my life not eating meat, and I don't
care what you do. Stallman lives his life writing and giving away
software which is militantly free. I don't see him running out
demanding that software copyrights be abolished. Rather, I've seen
him proposing some rather sane changes to copyright laws. You could
still sell software for money and keep the source secret after
these changes. And you might see me proposing laws that would
require factory farming be more humane.
Now, just as the earlier postings resulted in some inane economic
discussions, I expect a flood of postings and mail accusing me
of being a communist, or perhaps being out to put the American
Cattle Rancher out of business... ;-) But it's too late, this
vegetarian is out of the closet.
Followups for this entire discussion to your-favorite-graphical-
waste-receptical,-which-better-not-be-a-trashcan-or-Apple-will-sue-
you-for-violating-a-copyright-concerning-look-and-feel-of-something-
that-Xerox-invented.
------
Greg Lindahl
Russ Nelson
Any code that uses any amount (however small) of GNU code becomes GNU code.
You know, it's funny. I copyleft much of my software. I don't put my
code into the public domain (unless it's trivial). I object to the
public domain because it lets people take my code (which I want to
remain freely copyable w/ source) and distribute it under *their*
restrictions without source. People respond to this objection by
saying that my original code is not affected by the new restrictions.
Where are these people now that the foot's on the other shoe?
--
--russ (nelson@clutx [.bitnet | .clarkson.edu])
Live up to the light thou hast, and more will be granted thee.
A recession now appears more than 2 years away -- John D. Mathon, 4 Oct 1989.
I think killing is value-neutral in and of itself. -- Gary Strand, 8 Nov 1989.
Liberals run this country, by and large. -- Clayton Cramer, 20 Nov 1989.
Shut up and mind your Canadian business, you meddlesome foreigner. -- TK, 23 N.
Peter da Silva
> >no relationship to GNU. Freeware and PD software has fallen by the wayside,
> >and Lotus, Wordstar, and so on are winning the race.
> ^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Race? Sure, the race where all the entrants have only one leg, that
> leg only has one toe, and the runners are all comatose.
You're implying that PD software is somehow incapable of competing with
commercial software (and thus isn't in the race) or that it suffers from
the same problems as commercial software.
I *use* a PD spreadsheet, but my needs are those of the computer literate
society we both inhabit. Let's face it, I'm a programmer. Not an accountant.
There aren't any PD spreadsheets up to the quality an accountant needs. Why?
Because it's not possible? Lotus proves that's not true. I believe it's
because spreadsheets aren't sexy. Programmers don't need them. So programmers
don't get ego boosts from other programmers when they write them.
Come on. Prove me wrong.
> EMACS/JOVE can be [made comprehensible to a novice]
Perhaps. But it isn't that way out of the box. And it's not quite so easy
to fix it. I haven't yet found a PD editor that's acceptable to my wife, and...
> very well byt just spending a few minutes of your time (at $50/hour, right??)
...I don't make $50 an hour and I certainly have spent more than a few minutes
at the task.
> >but commercial editors and word processors are quite easy to use. And they're
> >getting better all the time.
> Sure, so is a bicycle, but how long and with how much effort does it
> take you on a bike to go from LA to San Fransisco? I mean, you
> COULD do it...
What does this mean? How does it refer to the fact that commercial editors and
word processors are getting easier to use?
> >But will they produce Lotus 1-2-3? Hell no.
> Who cares?
The thousands of people willing to spend $300 apeice on copies of Lotus 1-2-3
because the PD world hasn't produced the product they need.
> In summary, just go back to your PC and enjoy yourself opening all
> the shrink-wrap licensed software that you or your company paid
> well over what it was worth, the rest of us will get on with our
> lives and not resort to generating such drivel on the net.
About all the non-PD software I have is games. But then I'm a programmer. The
PD world is well suited to serving my needs. If I were (say) running a dental
office, or doing TV production work, or involved in any other such work for
which having the latest version of GNU Emacs is simply irrelevant... why then
I'd be out of luck in your ideal world.
Peter da Silva
> "Because RMS believes selling software is evil, he leads a movement to
> make selling software illegal."
Well...
(a) That's his stated goal. (b) That's the implied goal in section 2b of the
GNU public license.
I'm saying "RMS is leading a movement that is attempting to make people
unwittingly lose their intellectual property rights, because he believes that
restricting the use of software to people who have paid for it is evil."
> Rather, I've seen
> him proposing some rather sane changes to copyright laws. You could
> still sell software for money and keep the source secret after
> these changes.
Isn't that at odds with the GPL?
--
Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva <pe...@sugar.hackercorp.com>
`-_-'
'U` "I haven't lost my mind, it's backed up on tape somewhere"
Barry Shein
Ok, let's admit for a moment that FSF's point of view is radical and
maybe a teensy-bit intended to attract attention to the issues of
software copyright. I strongly suspect that if "the other side" was
interested in some compromise (and, I suspect, there's more chance of
that than the cynic might think, yes, it's making a difference) there
might be some room in between.
Now, consider for a moment "the other side". Like the SPA (Software
Publisher's Association.) What is *their* raison d'etre? cause celebre'?
Er, how about "goal"?
Their extreme opposite position, and that of Apple and others, is that
software copyrights can extend to things like look and feel. In other
words, if I decide to use |vertical bars| to indicate boldface then
perhaps I can copyright it and sue your ass if I catch you using them
w/o my permission.
Before you laugh consider Apple's claim on their copyright on the
trashcan icon. Not laughing anymore? Good.
Ok, let's grant that people deserve reward for innovation and all
that.
But at what point have the software vendors really established state
enforced monopoly businesses?
At what point are their businesses *only* viable in this so-called
capitalist economy because they've managed to get the taxpayers to
spend millions (if not billions) of dollars enforcing their
profitability?
Let's try some facts...
Phoenix Technologies (the BIOS folks) recently claimed that they're on
the verge of belly-up-itude (Chapt 11, bankruptcy) because of piracy.
Whether that's true or not they were certainly trying to make a loud
point and influence lawmakers. And I'm not sure we should take their
emotion-loaded word "piracy" at face value.
Maybe their business is (quite possibly and by their own admission)
not viable in a free market economy.
They need heavy subsidies from the Justice Department to make a go at
it. They need our police and courts and investigative agencies and
lawmakers and lord knows what else. Or else they don't make money.
And, we're supposed to be concerned.
How come this is all starting to sound like the "not growing corn
business" and similar subsidies. Only this time, instead of direct
subsidies, it's legal services subsidies.
Ok, hey, if someone came into my store (I don't have a store, but if I
did) and stole something wouldn't I expect a "taxpayer's subsidy" of
the police coming by and ripping the guy's face off? What's the
difference? Ain't that a basic part of the so-called "social
contract"?
Well, there is a difference.
If I claimed that I'm going broke because about 20% of all high school
kids (a typical claim) was ripping my store off, all a bunch of
criminals, and therefore I need constant police surveillance, new laws
regarding handling of my merchandise both before and after it's bought
etc etc I think I'd be told to go take a flying leap.
In fact, unless there's something very unusual about your situation,
if you called the police more than like once a week (depending on the
size of your store, whatever, "a lot") and reported a new data point
in your personal shoplifting plague they'd tell you to go take a
flying leap (more like, go hire security guards, put the merchandise
somewhere it can't be ripped off, anything, but this has to be mostly
'your' fault.)
Is it possible...
Is it *just* possible?
That selling $2 floppies for $395 might just not be a completely
viable way to make a living (that is, without the police coming in to
hit people over the head with sticks if they don't pay the $395.)
Hey, no one is forcing you to buy it! Or use it (ie. rip it off)?
Barry, are you arguing that if something is too expensive then
stealing it is somehow justified? The old five-fingered discount?
No, of course not.
I'm just saying that, well, if I left gold jewelry on a table in a
public place unattended and it was ripped off there's no doubt the
people who stole it were thieves.
But there's also no doubt that I was a fool and deserve only minimal
sympathy from the authorities (ie. the public's tax dollars) in
recovering my property. Even if it drove me out of business.
And it's just possible that folks with attitudes like the SPA and
Apple would be a hell of a lot happier as Commissars in the Soviet
Union where you can go running to the govt authorities every time
someone breaks one of the silly rules you had created and your
(potentially) fabulous profits dwindle.
Da, vee charge 50 rubles for a bottle of good state wodka and these
INGRATES make their own for 5 kopeks and von't buy ours! Vee make
wodka illegal to make without special license they can't get! Then vee
get our 50 rubles! Anyone make their own, off to gulag! (oops, forgot
about the AT&F, sorry...)
But a free-market economy is no place for this (very expensive)
nonsense.
And I for one am getting quite disgusted with these companies' blatant
attempts to create state-sponsored software monopolies.
--
-Barry Shein
Software Tool & Die, Purveyors to the Trade | b...@world.std.com
1330 Beacon St, Brookline, MA 02146, (617) 739-0202 | {xylogics,uunet}world!bzs
Tony Sanders
>I'm saying "RMS is leading a movement that is attempting to make people
>unwittingly lose their intellectual property rights, because he believes that
>restricting the use of software to people who have paid for it is evil."
The only right they loose is they cannot sell gnu code for their own
profit.
For anything other than the "GNU library" and "bison" issue:
I fail to see how someone could unwittingly do this unless they
havn't a clue. Would you just snarf up code from ANY source with a
copyright without at LEAST reading the copyright yourself. You
don't need a lawyer to figure it out.
If you ONLY mean "GNU library" and "bison" then:
I agree that it is more possible that one could "unwittingly" use gnu code
in this case although for me it still isn't an issue. You would have to
be pretty careless.
Would you be happy if it were more obvious that you cannot use this
code without falling under the GNU copyright? Or does it really
strike deeper than that?
Would you be happy if these items were removed from the copyright realm?
-- sanders
Reply-To: cs.utexas.edu!ibmaus!auschs!sanders.austin.ibm.com!sanders
I love to hack, to hack, to hack . . .
Peter da Silva
> Now, consider for a moment "the other side". Like the SPA (Software
> Publisher's Association.)
I'm the other side. I'm not the SPA. I don't agree with their goals.
There are two kinds of software, with two kinds of market. Commercial
software, primarily oriented towards computer-naive users. And Free
software, primarly oriented towards computer geeks. Each has their place.
I have written a lot of both, myself.
The GNU folks don't seem to understand that there's rhyme or reason to
commercial software.
> But at what point have the software vendors really established state
> enforced monopoly businesses?
When you can't write your own version of their software and sell it or
give it away. Ask a hard one.
Let's see you write a free IBM-compatible BIOS. But why should you? It's
not of any interest to computer nerds.
> That selling $2 floppies for $395 might just not be a completely
> viable way to make a living (that is, without the police coming in to
> hit people over the head with sticks if they don't pay the $395.)
You're not talking about selling $2 floppies.
If the pirates (yes, pirates) are so damn good, let them write their own
freeware version of XYZcalc. If they can, they'll put XYZco out of business.
Otherwise, XYZco has made a significant investment and created a new good
that they wouldn't have created if they weren't going to make money at it.
And GNU will never produce an XYZcalc clone. It's not cool.
> Da, vee charge 50 rubles for a bottle of good state wodka and these
> INGRATES make their own for 5 kopeks and von't buy ours!
But they don't make their own. They steal it and sell it for 5 kopeks.
> And I for one am getting quite disgusted with these companies' blatant
> attempts to create state-sponsored software monopolies.
And that's why I'm getting disgusted with folks like you who can't tell
the difference between naive users... who need a hell of a lot of
handholding (but don't want to pay for it)... and computer freaks.
The only other solution is to make the software incomprehensible without
a lot of real handholding and sell support. That's the society you're gonna
create if you win.
Jay you ignorant splut! Maynard
In article <30...@cello.UUCP> san...@sanders.austin.ibm.com (Tony Sanders) writes:
>The only right they loose is they cannot sell gnu code for their own
>profit.
>For anything other than the "GNU library" and "bison" issue:
> I fail to see how someone could unwittingly do this unless they
> havn't a clue. Would you just snarf up code from ANY source with a
> copyright without at LEAST reading the copyright yourself. You
> don't need a lawyer to figure it out.
Well, for example, take a recent posting to alt.sources: GNU getopt
ported to MS-DOS.
It was posted without a copy of the GNU Public Virus.
Despite that, it is still covered by it. That means that anyone who uses
that package is, because of section 2b of the GPV, automatically forced
to give _his source code_, not just the GNU getopt package, away, and
prevented from restricting redistribution of that code. All without his
knowledge.
I agree that the person who posted GNU getopt without a copy of the GPV
screwed up; still, that doesn't mean that those who use the code should
be penalized.
Rodney Peck II
Jay> Well, for example, take a recent posting to alt.sources: GNU getopt
Jay> ported to MS-DOS.
Jay> It was posted without a copy of the GNU Public Virus.
A bit hostile? (and pointless)
Jay> Despite that, it is still covered by it. That means that anyone who uses
Jay> that package is, because of section 2b of the GPV, automatically forced
Jay> to give _his source code_, not just the GNU getopt package, away, and
Jay> prevented from restricting redistribution of that code. All without his
Jay> knowledge.
no, if you use the getopt package, you don't have to post your
sources. if you change getopt and redistribute it, then you do.
--
Rodney
Rich Salz
>I agree that the person who posted GNU getopt without a copy of the GPV
>screwed up; still, that doesn't mean that those who use the code should
>be penalized.
The truism "ignorance of the law is no excuse" has special meaning when
copyright is involved. Find a lawyer to explain it. I think there were
also some articles in UnixReview about it.
Basically, the rule is that even if you get something without the copyright
THE COURTS have said that you are liable. (You'd presumably seek civil
action against the person to cover your tail.)
I emphasized the courts, above, because I wish to point out that this is
not FSF's doing; it is the work of the US Legal System.
/r$
--
Please send comp.sources.unix-related mail to rs...@uunet.uu.net.
Use a domain-based address or give alternate paths, or you may lose out.
Jon Allen Boone
>I'm the other side. I'm not the SPA. I don't agree with their goals.
Ever hear the saying that there are *more* than two sides to every story?
>There are two kinds of software, with two kinds of market. Commercial
>software, primarily oriented towards computer-naive users. And Free
>software, primarly oriented towards computer geeks. Each has their place.
>I have written a lot of both, myself.
Perhaps there is a better way to distinguish between the two types.
There is commercial software which is written primarily because the
people involved want to make money and they think that writing programs
for a living is a lot easier and a lot more fun than digging ditches or
serving in the armed forces or working as a social worker.
Then there is public domain software which is written by people who love
to program, people who need a package that does something a commercial
program doens~t do (or asks too much money for), or people who just
wrote a little program and thought that someone else might want to use
it.
Then there~s FSF and GNU software. GNU software is good (ie. it~s worth
using). I think that most people here would agree, otherwise this
discussion wouldn~t be raging. Now, going on the assumption that GNU is
good software and you will want to use it, what *better* way for rms to
get you to do what he wants than by using the very same rules and
regulations that corporations like Microsoft use to charge more for
their programs than some people (myself included) think it is
worthwhile. Some people have said that no one is forcing us to *buy*
software we think is overpriced (disregarding any lack of software to do
what we *need* it to do) - we can either write our own or do without.
Now, some other people (or was it the same people?) are saying that they
really wish that rms and the FSF would change their minds and forget
about GPL and the copyleft because they would *really* like to use bison
and gcc (or whatever the particular programs were) and its hard to find
software thats as nice as that for what they want to do (in their
opinion, of course). Now, we *could* say "Hey - you lose! No one is
forcing you to use GNU software - so take a flying leap and get the heck
out of our faces - go do your own thing" In fact, some claim that this
has been said "Write your own <smirk>" Well, that~s what rms did - he
didn~t like the actions that some group was taking, he had access to
their stuff, he reversed engineered the software and viola - he had a
version to use (or give away as i believe he did) and he didn~t have to
put up with the other people bs.
So, to make a short point even more long winded -> compromise is *not*
out of the question for most of the people who support GNU. As for rms
and the FSF i can not speak for them. However, note that i am not
against *shareware* where i can send the author however much *i decide*
the program is worth to me.
>The GNU folks don't seem to understand that there's rhyme or reason to
>commercial software.
The GNU folks, contrary to your opinions, specifically mention your
stated concerns about commercial software -> they not only allow, but
will provide you with a list of people who offer *support and
hand-holding* for their software. They also encourage you to do the
same thing (rms does it). On the other hand, they do say - if i want to
run your program without the expensive cost of supporting other users,
etc. i should be able to do so.
>Let's see you write a free IBM-compatible BIOS. But why should you? It's
>not of any interest to computer nerds.
Of course not! Computer nerds would *never* be interested in actually
building hardware! Computer nerds are only interested in compilers,
debuggers, and the latest version of tetris. Get real. If no one is
interested in BIOS, then why does Phoenix claim that pirates are running
them out of business? Now, the fact that *most* pirates are high-school
kids, most of whom have neither access to nor the information we in
college (and out of college) have could well explain why they don~t
write their own - they don~t know how! You should not assume that
simply because it hasn~t been done - it won~t be. Or that it isn~t a
fun hack. What is fun for you is a different kind of pain for me. What
i consider fun you probably consider bizarre or wierd or even stupid.
What you *can* say (and what i gather you are saying) is that given that
MicroSoft hadn~t written Excel or Word, you sure-as-blue-blazes wouldn~t
have either.
>If the pirates (yes, pirates) are so damn good, let them write their own
>freeware version of XYZcalc. If they can, they'll put XYZco out of business.
>Otherwise, XYZco has made a significant investment and created a new good
>that they wouldn't have created if they weren't going to make money at it.
See previous post about "pirates". Note: pirates and supporters of GNU
are not an identical set - ie. they do not contain all of the same
members. While some pirates would support GNU, most that i know would
not - they are not interested in intellectual property rights, they
simply think that the computer industry charges too much for the
software - so one guy buys it and the rest get it for free....let~s
see....$30 ... 1000 copies....that~s not too bad...what~s that? 3 cents
a copy? (my math may be wrong - i am not a math major)
pirating is a purely reactionary action - it attempts to circumvent an
industry that, like *you* Mr. DaSilva ignores them or worse yet, calls
them computer nerds in an attempted insult (apparently).
>And GNU will never produce an XYZcalc clone. It's not cool.
I don~t know about XYZcalc, but if you bother to *read* the GNU
manifesto, it specifically states that rms intends to have one
spreadsheet - (barring contributions from others). Now, if *you~re* so
good at programming, why don~t *you* write a XYZcalc clone and use GNU
source for part of it so that it falls under GPL - that way, you~ll be
happy, rms will be one step closer to completing his GNU, and we~ll all
heap loads and loads of praises on you. All hail Eris! All hail Slack!
All hail DaSilva! Of course, we probably won~t *pay* you much, but
then again, you never know - if XYZcalc is such a hot thing, then maybe
we~ll all just fall over ourselves in order to give you what we consider
just recompense. Note: you *can* sell GNU software. but you *must*
tell people that it is available for free - provided you don~t charge
outrages prices, you could make a decent amount of money simply by
providing a gnu for pcs or (god-and-rms-forbid) macs - most people, like
you say, are too clueless to do it themselves, so you could still make
money off of them, and i still wouldn~t have to pay you for a service
that i don~t *need* from you!
>But they don't make their own. They steal it and sell it for 5 kopeks.
Again you falaciously mix GNU and pirating in the same barrel. Pirates
steal teh software and then trade it for other stolen goods. GNUers
give away the software which is free in the first place (no theft
involved) and sell hand-holding support and GNU provision services. As
you say, there is a wide demand for this kind of thing, so you should
have no problem making a lot of money doing it. I have friends back
home who are barely out of high-school (and did it while in high-school)
who make $25 to $50 an hour selling consultation services - they don~t
write the software - they don~t even provide the software - they simply
hold hands and walk away with lots o cash. Now, why should the user
have to pay an additional $400 for the original piece of software? With
the amount of cluelessness in the world today, it is not uncommon for
them to make $200 or even $300 dollars in two days.
>And that's why I'm getting disgusted with folks like you who can't tell
>the difference between naive users... who need a hell of a lot of
>handholding (but don't want to pay for it)... and computer freaks.
I won~t say that your disgusting, but....:-)
seriously, you make similar errors in assuming things. first, the
clueless ones are paying for handholding - check out the people who are
supposedly providing this "no-charge handholding" - the same people who
payed the programmer to "write" the program and usually the quality of
their handholding is barely above "what - a system error - oh, that
means you gotta reboot!" Gee, that~s worth the extra amount of money i
paid for that piece of software.
Secondly, as i gave an example of above, people are often turning to
consultants in order to get their handholding, as
joe-average-software-house doesn~t provide adequate support or worse yet
(like Borland) they drop support of their programs - where are we to
turn to then, mr. dasilva, if not to consultants who have found it worth
their while to learn how to use Turbo Pascal for the mac (one of the
reasons i stopped using macs on a regular basis around Christmas last
year).
I have often provided consultation for these same consultants - for
free. my primary pursuit is *not* money - it is knowledge. rather than
charging people $25 to $50 an hour in order to pay my tuition, i take
out loans and beg and plead the government to help me out. Perhaps
you~d rather i charged people more money than i thought my services were
worth (the only way i could afford the $18,855 approx. that it costs to
go to CMU). I, instead work for $4.50 an hour at the library and as a
computer cluster attendant - i give a decent amount of handholding,
watch the computers, file maintainence reports, etc. - all jobs that
someone needs to do in order for us to have computer labs for the
students, and i still make a comfortable living - $321 is my next
projected paycheck - for only two weeks of work (34 hours one week and
31.5 another week, some of which were from midnight to 8am at 5.62 an
hour - we leave it up to the serious netter to figure out how many
graveyards i worked these last two weeks ) I don~t live expansively -
in fact, most of my money goes for long-distance calls back home to
texas and for food, school books, clothing and incedentals. It~s not
much, but i~m happy.
>The only other solution is to make the software incomprehensible without
>a lot of real handholding and sell support. That's the society you're gonna
>create if you win.
That~s not true. If "naive users" need as much handholding as you
claim, then you will have no shortage of people asking you for
consultations. However, you will not have the *computer geeks* asking
you for help - they~ll figure it out themselves. What~s wrong with
that? You yourself say that computer geeks make up a small portion of
computer users. Are you saying that you couldn~t afford to absorb the
potential loss of business (not really, as computer geeks probalby woudl
avoid your software anyway - or steal it) that comes from sharing your
source and only providing hand-holding (the prevalent need as you seem
to state it). If, perchance, you were to decide to sell me the source,
i would probably turn around and incorportate it into something that
falls under the GPL so that it would have to be made available upon
request. Given equal access to resources, the programmer who produces
the code best suited for the market will make the most money (so says
free-market economy theory). What~s the matter, afraid of a little
competition? Already we have a lack of access to resources due to the
physical nature of hardware - why should you be allowed to impose a
restriction on an intangible think like the random spewings of your mind
(assumign creativity is spewing and programming is creative). If you
want credit, then there~s certainly nothing wrong with that - however,
why should you be able to force everyone else to pay you and then not
even give them the things that may well be most useful to them - the
source code.
Of course, you could alway says (with a tone of superiority) "well, if
you want it, then reverse engineer it!"
>--
>Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva <pe...@sugar.hackercorp.com>
yes, i have - and he liked it too.
>`-_-'
> 'U` "I haven't lost my mind, it's backed up on tape somewhere"
oh yeah?
well....
iain the flippant | You'll PAY To Know What You REALLY Think |
jb...@andrew.cmu.edu(INTERNET) | Your MIND Left Intentionally Blank |
R746JB3O@cmccvb(BITNET) | SCIENCE DOES NOT REMOVE THE TERROR OF THE GODS|
disclaimer: anything I say may be wrong - I don't represent anyone but me
Peter da Silva
> no, if you use the getopt package, you don't have to post your
> sources. if you change getopt and redistribute it, then you do.
Please re-read section 2b of the GPL.
--
Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva <pe...@sugar.hackercorp.com>
Scott Schwartz
>> no, if you use the getopt package, you don't have to post your
>> sources. if you change getopt and redistribute it, then you do.
Peter da Silva writes:
>Please re-read section 2b of the GPL.
Section 2 begins with:
+-----
| 2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of
|it, and copy and distribute such modifications under the terms of Paragraph
|1 above, provided that you also do the following:
+-----
If you didn't modify getopt() then section 2 doesn't apply, right?
Section 2 is followed by:
+-----
|Mere aggregation of another independent work with the Program (or its
|derivative) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring
|the other work under the scope of these terms.
+-----
So including gnu getopt() in the same shar file doesn't entangle
you either, right?
--
Scott Schwartz <schw...@shire.cs.psu.edu>
"More mips; cheaper mips; never too many." -- John Mashey
Barry Shein
From: pe...@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) [Responding to me]
>> But at what point have the software vendors really established state
>> enforced monopoly businesses?
>
>When you can't write your own version of their software and sell it or
>give it away. Ask a hard one.
But that was my point, we are at that point. You CAN'T write your own
version of the Mac interface and sell or give it away (that is, you
can, but Apple has made it clear that if you do they will sue your
butt and the courts appear ready to back them up.)
>If the pirates (yes, pirates) are so damn good, let them write their own
>freeware version of XYZcalc. If they can, they'll put XYZco out of business.
>Otherwise, XYZco has made a significant investment and created a new good
>that they wouldn't have created if they weren't going to make money at it.
You seem to be utterly unaware of what look and feel software suits
are all about, no?
You can't "write your own freeware version", that's the entire point
and if you don't understand that you've utterly missed my point. The
whole nature of a look and feel suit is a copyright suit based on the
fact that your software simply "looks" and "feels" like my software,
no common code need be present at all.
Jay you ignorant splut! Maynard
>In <.SP...@splut.conmicro.com> j...@splut.conmicro.com (Jay "you ignorant splut!" Maynard) writes:
>>I agree that the person who posted GNU getopt without a copy of the GPV
>>screwed up; still, that doesn't mean that those who use the code should
>>be penalized.
>THE COURTS have said that you are liable. (You'd presumably seek civil
>action against the person to cover your tail.)
I was speaking in the moral sense, not the legal sense.
I don't object to the fact that someone in that situation should have to
conform to the coyright; what I am objecting to is, specifically, the
virus part of the GPV: his code, _not just GNU getopt_, falls under the
terms of the GPV. This is unconscionable.
People wanted an example of how someone's program could fall under the
terms of the GPV without his knowledge. Here 'tis.
Jay you ignorant splut! Maynard
Jay> It was posted without a copy of the GNU Public Virus.
>A bit hostile? (and pointless)
Hostile? Possibly. Pointless? nope, since it is an accurate description
of the effect of the GNU Public License: it's a legal virus.
Jay> Despite that, it is still covered by it. That means that anyone who uses
Jay> that package is, because of section 2b of the GPV, automatically forced
Jay> to give _his source code_, not just the GNU getopt package, away, and
Jay> prevented from restricting redistribution of that code. All without his
Jay> knowledge.
>no, if you use the getopt package, you don't have to post your
>sources. if you change getopt and redistribute it, then you do.
Sorry, that's not correct. Paragraph 2b of the GPV specifically forces
you to place all of your program under its terms if you use any GNU code
in it. This is the virus effect I refer to.
Anton Rang
>
>Is it *just* possible?
>
>That selling $2 floppies for $395 might just not be a completely
>viable way to make a living (that is, without the police coming in to
>hit people over the head with sticks if they don't pay the $395.)
The cost of developing software is *NOT* related to the cost of a
disk. Really. Truly. I could spend a year developing a software
package, and if I were lucky sell 1,000 copies of it. What if I'm
charging, say, $10. That's low enough that piracy probably won't be a
major problem (though it's hard to say).
Assuming no distribution costs, disk costs, advertising costs, etc.,
I will have a return of $10,000 on my year of work. I'm not going to
write too much software at that rate. And selling 1,000 copies of
many software packages is actually not bad at all.
More realistically, a complex system like Lotus 1-2-3 costs millions
of dollars to develop, write manuals for, and test. The company has a
responsibility to its shareholders (this is capitalism, after all :-)
to make as high a profit as it can. So it charges enough to cover its
(considerable) expenses, and to return a reasonable profit to its
shareholders. $20/copy just isn't going to do it.
>I'm just saying that, well, if I left gold jewelry on a table in a
>public place unattended and it was ripped off there's no doubt the
>people who stole it were thieves.
>
>But there's also no doubt that I was a fool and deserve only minimal
>sympathy from the authorities (ie. the public's tax dollars) in
>recovering my property. Even if it drove me out of business.
All right, let's think about this...if I wrote a program and sold it
without a near-perfect form of copy-protection, and somebody pirated
it, there's no doubt they were a thief. But I was a fool to sell it
without the copy-protection. Therefore, I should sell software only
with copy-protection, even though this may make it less usable. A lot
of companies used to do this, but luckily many have given up on it.
This analogy is flawed, anyway...we haven't got copiers for gold
jewelry (yet). Quite a difference....
Anton
+---------------------------+------------------+-------------+
| Anton Rang (grad student) | ra...@cs.wisc.edu | UW--Madison |
+---------------------------+------------------+-------------+
Peter da Silva
> If you didn't modify getopt() then section 2 doesn't apply, right?
I don't believe that to be the case. Certainly you need to read more than
individual sentences out of context.
> |Mere aggregation of another independent work with the Program (or its
> |derivative) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring
> |the other work under the scope of these terms.
> So including gnu getopt() in the same shar file doesn't entangle
> you either, right?
But including it in the same *binary* does. Stallman has explicitly stated
this in some forum or another.
Peter da Silva
> From: pe...@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) [Responding to me]
> >> But at what point have the software vendors really established state
> >> enforced monopoly businesses?
> >When you can't write your own version of their software and sell it or
> >give it away. Ask a hard one.
> But that was my point, we are at that point.
I agree.
> You seem to be utterly unaware of what look and feel software suits
> are all about, no?
No.
I agree.
Apple's behaviour in this case is unethical. I think it ironic that one of
the losers in this case is Atari (I don't know the details of the agreement
between DRI and Apple over GEM, but I do remember that they had to change
the GEM interface, so GEM on the Atari ST is no longer the same as GEM on
the IBM-PC). You see, Atari was the "winner" in the original Pac-man look
and feel lawsuit. Ironic.
Where we don't agree is whether or not this is relevent to normal copyrights
and piracy. I don't see that it's any more relevent than Werner von Braun's
lawsuit against Tom Lehrer. That is: there's a connection, but it's pretty
far removed from GNU.
Peter da Silva
> Ever hear the saying that there are *more* than two sides to every story?
Noice to hear. I've been getting the impression that the FSF folks see only
two sides: themselves the likes of Apple.
> Now, some other people (or was it the same people?) are saying that they
> really wish that rms and the FSF would change their minds and forget
> about GPL and the copyleft because they would *really* like to use bison
> and gcc (or whatever the particular programs were) and its hard to find
> software thats as nice as that for what they want to do (in their
> opinion, of course).
Not me. I couldn't care less if they released Bison or not. In fact I wish
they weren't on the market. They're making it harder for the folks trying
to get REALLY freely-redistributable stuff accepted.
> Now, we *could* say "Hey - you lose! No one is
> forcing you to use GNU software - so take a flying leap and get the heck
> out of our faces - go do your own thing" In fact, some claim that this
> has been said "Write your own <smirk>" Well, that~s what rms did - he
> didn~t like the actions that some group was taking, he had access to
> their stuff, he reversed engineered the software and viola - he had a
> version to use (or give away as i believe he did) and he didn~t have to
> put up with the other people bs.
Fine. No problem with that.
The problem is that Microsoft doesn't try to assert rights over other people's
source code. Apple does, but then I agree with the folks who call Apple
unethical. I don't really see that much difference between RMS and Apple.
Your argument *here* seems to be "RMS is more moral than Apple, therefore
he's a saint.". I just think he's less of a scoundrel.
> Of course not! Computer nerds would *never* be interested in actually
> building hardware!
BIOS is software.
> Computer nerds are only interested in compilers,
> debuggers, and the latest version of tetris. Get real. If no one is
> interested in BIOS, then why does Phoenix claim that pirates are running
> them out of business?
Maybe they are. It's *expensive* to reverse-engineer IBM's bugs.
> What you *can* say (and what i gather you are saying) is that given that
> MicroSoft hadn~t written Excel or Word, you sure-as-blue-blazes wouldn~t
> have either.
I haven't seen *any* PD software that wasn't either (a) oriented towards
computer geeks, or (b) strictly limited in utility. Prove me wrong. Provide
a counter-example.
> See previous post about "pirates". Note: pirates and supporters of GNU
> are not an identical set
Never even implied they were.
> pirating is a purely reactionary action - it attempts to circumvent an
> industry that, like *you* Mr. DaSilva ignores them or worse yet, calls
> them computer nerds in an attempted insult (apparently).
Hell no. I'm a computer nerd. And proud of it.
> I don~t know about XYZcalc, but if you bother to *read* the GNU
> manifesto, it specifically states that rms intends to have one
> spreadsheet - (barring contributions from others).
I have a spreadsheet. It's called SC. It's freely redistributable. It's
also pretty limited by comparison with commercial versions.
> Now, if *you~re* so
> good at programming, why don~t *you* write a XYZcalc clone
It's no fun.
> Again you falaciously mix GNU and pirating in the same barrel.
Nope. I'm talking about two seperate populations. The people at the FSF who
compete with Microsoft and Borland with freeware compilers, and the pirates
who compete with Microsoft and Lotus with pirate copies of 1-2-3 and Word.
[ long discussion of how he works for free and lives off my tax money ]
Go ahead and charge for your services.
> What~s the matter, afraid of a little
> competition?
Hell no. I'm all in favor of free software. I write free software. And I write
for-pay software. I just don't agree with coercing people to write free
software.
> (assumign creativity is spewing and programming is creative)
Them's fighting words. Remember: 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.
> Of course, you could alway says (with a tone of superiority) "well, if
> you want it, then reverse engineer it!"
I've done it, when I needed to. I'd certainly like to have more source
available. I just don't feel justified in forcing people to give it to me.
--
Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva <pe...@sugar.hackercorp.com>
Barry Shein
From: ra...@cs.wisc.edu (Anton Rang)
> The cost of developing software is *NOT* related to the cost of a
>disk. Really. Truly. I could spend a year developing a software
>package, and if I were lucky sell 1,000 copies of it. What if I'm
>charging, say, $10. That's low enough that piracy probably won't be a
>major problem (though it's hard to say).
I didn't say it was, I was only talking about the perception of
consumers (subjective reality), to a lot of them they simply see that
they're being charged, say, $395 for a couple of floppies and a manual
(book.)
That's not an outrageous comment, haven't *you* ever complained about
a book that cost, say, $75? Ever been tempted to just share one with a
friend or take it out of the library instead (or even, gasp, xerox the
few pages you needed from a borrowed copy?) Did you, at that moment,
fret about some poor authors/publishers behind it? Nah, you just
needed the info in the book and figured you were being a clever
consumer, thrifty, whatever.
C'mon, we've all had that reaction to something or other. And although
it may be true that there was an author, production costs etc behind
that price we still felt like it was a rip-off. Consumers aren't
rational, so what? That's capitalism, everyone drives their best
bargain and slipping thru the cracks is usually considered fair play.
(In fact, and risking soap-boxing political philosophy, it's the very
existence of a zillion little laws and rules which makes slipping thru
the cracks seem morally justifiable since we've reduced morality to
external influences, ie, have you followed the letter of the law,
rather than any internal sense of justice, consider the tax codes,
only a naive fool would hesitate to take a deduction because the govt
needs the money. The parallels might not be obvious, but they're
there.)
The main reason it doesn't plague the music industry more (it does) is
that a pre-recorded cassette tape usually costs under $10 and the same
quality blank tape is about $5 so it's usually not worth the trouble
unless you have a lot of time on your hands. What do you think would
happen if they cost $50? As much as they bellyache (they do) it's
largely been made liveable by sheer economics.
My point is (what *is* your point, Barry?) that there is a level at
which duplication becomes so much cheaper than buying the original
that you create a situation where about the only thing which can save
your business is massive government intervention and subsidy, and that
is not a healthy situation (and it's the current situation in the
software biz for a lot of companies.)
> Assuming no distribution costs, disk costs, advertising costs, etc.,
>I will have a return of $10,000 on my year of work. I'm not going to
>write too much software at that rate. And selling 1,000 copies of
>many software packages is actually not bad at all.
Boo-hoo. Capitalism doesn't give flying leap, so die, so what? There's
plenty of jobs at McDonalds if the economics of your business doesn't
cut it.
Ok, that was harsh, but the fact that it costs you a lot doesn't
justify creating government monopolies to ensure your profits. And
that's what this is all about (I realize you aren't arguing with that
exactly, but you should be, or at least acknowledging what
conversation you are in the middle of!)
>>But there's also no doubt that I was a fool and deserve only minimal
>>sympathy from the authorities (ie. the public's tax dollars) in
>>recovering my property. Even if it drove me out of business.
>
> All right, let's think about this...if I wrote a program and sold it
>without a near-perfect form of copy-protection, and somebody pirated
>it, there's no doubt they were a thief. But I was a fool to sell it
>without the copy-protection. Therefore, I should sell software only
>with copy-protection, even though this may make it less usable. A lot
>of companies used to do this, but luckily many have given up on it.
>
> This analogy is flawed, anyway...we haven't got copiers for gold
>jewelry (yet). Quite a difference....
In the first place, I didn't say a word about copy-protection, you
just introduced that. I hate copy-protection and strenuously resist
buying such software.
In the second place, it's *THEIR* argument that COPYING == THEFT, not
mine! That's what forces the analogy. The flaws are inherent, it's
possible you were on the verge of understanding the other side of this
argument right there but you probably resisted the thought.
Paul Wilson
>the losers in this case is Atari (I don't know the details of the agreement
>between DRI and Apple over GEM, but I do remember that they had to change
>the GEM interface, so GEM on the Atari ST is no longer the same as GEM on
>the IBM-PC). You see, Atari was the "winner" in the original Pac-man look
>and feel lawsuit. Ironic.
>
nearly-arbitrary design choices. In the case of a video game, the
"look and feel" is extremely important to the functionality of the
product, in more ways than is the case for a graphical interface
to a computer.
In the case of Pac-Man, the look and feel is an essential part
of the innovation that may or may not deserve protection.
In the case of the Mac GUI, all of the important innovations
were swiped from Xerox. The ones they're suing over are nearly
arbitrary, analogous to the placement of car's brake and
accelerator pedals.
It seems to me that Atari may have been trying to avoid giving
other people a free ride on Pac Man's innovation, but Apple
is trying to keep people from getting a free ride on Xerox'
innovation, by stifling the development of standards. They're
nitpicking about arbitrary or nearly-arbitrary details, rather
than true innovations.
On the other hand, I don't really know much about the source
of Pac Man's ideas/design choices, so maybe Atari is scumbags
too. But it's certainly not clear they're on the same side
of the (admittedly fine) line as Apple.
-- Paul
Paul R. Wilson
Software Systems Laboratory lab ph.: (312) 996-9216
U. of Illin. at C. EECS Dept. (M/C 154) wil...@carcoar.stanford.edu
Box 4348 Chicago,IL 60680
Peter da Silva
> The main reason it doesn't plague the music industry more (it does) is
> that a pre-recorded cassette tape usually costs under $10 and the same
If you could sell as many copies of a piece of software as you can a tape,
and if the production costs were as low, then this analogy would hold water.
> Ok, that was harsh, but the fact that it costs you a lot doesn't
> justify creating government monopolies to ensure your profits.
The fact that the industry in question (quality software for folks who aren't
computer geeks like you & I) wouldn't exist otherwise, though, changes things
a bit.
> that's what this is all about
Not really. If you can reverse engineer it it's not a monopoly. If you can't,
it is. That's the difference between Apple and Microsoft.
Jim Thompson
>In article <19...@texsun.Central.Sun.Com>, someone whose name I just
>accidentally deleted says:
Was me.
>Followups for this entire discussion to your-favorite-graphical-
>waste-receptical,-which-better-not-be-a-trashcan-or-Apple-will-sue-
>you-for-violating-a-copyright-concerning-look-and-feel-of-something-
>that-Xerox-invented.
Which has to be one of my favorite things about OpenLook (from SMI, anyway.)
the little 'graphical-waste-receptical' is labeled 'Wastebasket'.
Sure enough, if you throw things in it, a little bit of paper pops out
of the top. (Like the trashcan is full, I guess.) Since Sun can *prove*
that its windowing technology is independant of Apple and others, this is
almost a slap in the face of look-n-feel suits.
More religion..
Jim
Jim Thompson - Network Engineering - Sun Microsystems - jth...@central.sun.com
Member of the Fatalistic International Society for Hedonistic Youth (FISHY)
"Unemployment is the solution, not the problem." -- B.I.R.D.
Anton Rang
>In fact, some claim that this
>has been said "Write your own <smirk>" Well, that~s what rms did - he
>didn~t like the actions that some group was taking, he had access to
>their stuff, he reversed engineered the software and viola - he had a
>version to use (or give away as i believe he did) and he didn~t have to
>put up with the other people bs.
No, he did *not* reverse engineer the software. Reverse engineering
means that you take somebody's software, figure out exactly how it
works, and write something which is implemented the same way (more or
less). This is often illegal. He simply wrote more-or-less
compatible replacements.
>If no one is interested in BIOS, then why does Phoenix claim that
>pirates are running them out of business?
I don't know the details of this claim, but there are at least two
distinct reasons for piracy: (1) to use software without paying for
it, or (2) to make money by selling other people's software. I'm
willing to bet that #2 is the only reason people would bother to
pirate a BIOS implementation: so they could sell it more cheaply than
Phoenix (since the pirates don't have to pay back their development
costs).
>Now, the fact that *most* pirates are high-school kids
Bad assumption. Most pirates of game software may be high-school
kids. Most pirates overall, though, are not: they're just average
computer users. Corporations are bad at this. The average school
pirates more software than all of the kids going to it.
>What you *can* say (and what i gather you are saying) is that given that
>MicroSoft hadn~t written Excel or Word, you sure-as-blue-blazes wouldn~t
>have either.
If MicroSoft hadn't written Word, I suspect it would not have been
written for a LONG time. I haven't got a steady enough source of
income to be able to spend 20 years writing, debugging, testing, and
writing manuals for a program like that. Even if I got together with
10 other people and we wrote it in three years, there's no way I would
be willing to spend 3 years without any income for it. I can't afford
to do that (not being independently wealthy).
On the other hand, I can manage to spend 20-30 hours a week writing
programs if I expect to make some money from it. I paid for three
years of college with money from commercial software I've written. I
wouldn't have been able to spend much time on it if I were doing it
for free; I'd be working the 20-30 hours a week someplace where I
could make money.
Sure, I write free software from time to time. But I don't usually
spend the time to write user manuals, add in features which aren't
likely to be used by me or my friends, etc.
>Of course, you could alway says (with a tone of superiority) "well, if
>you want it, then reverse engineer it!"
If you want it, and you're not willing to pay me for my time and
trouble, write it yourself--from scratch--since you obviously believe
that it wasn't any work for me to write it in the first place.
Greg Lindahl
>I haven't seen *any* PD software that wasn't either (a) oriented towards
>computer geeks, or (b) strictly limited in utility. Prove me wrong. Provide
>a counter-example.
You must not look very far.
I will define "strictly limited in utility" to mean more limited than
comparable commerical software. I submit Uniterm, a terminal program
for the Atari ST. Given the large number of modems in this world, obviously
they are not used only by computer geeks.
There is also a spreadsheet program for the ST which includes a full
set of math functions plus graphing, with a full GEM interface. This means
it's better than the original Visicalc. However, since I'm merely
destroying your *any* claim, I shan't submit it.
By the way, Atari didn't get hurt that much in the DRI/Apple suit. They
didn't have to change their GEM version one bit. DRI's later GEM
versions have this awful desktop, while we still have a nice one.
------
Greg Lindahl
Peter da Silva
> I will define "strictly limited in utility" to mean more limited than
> comparable commerical software. I submit Uniterm, a terminal program
> for the Atari ST. Given the large number of modems in this world, obviously
> they are not used only by computer geeks.
Terminal programs are oriented towards computer geeks. They're spillover tech,
but they're one of the most used items on any nerd's list of programs.
> There is also a spreadsheet program for the ST which includes a full
> set of math functions plus graphing, with a full GEM interface. This means
> it's better than the original Visicalc. However, since I'm merely
> destroying your *any* claim, I shan't submit it.
Is it up to Lotus-123 level, or is it merely better than other Atari ST
program?
> By the way, Atari didn't get hurt that much in the DRI/Apple suit. They
> didn't have to change their GEM version one bit. DRI's later GEM
> versions have this awful desktop, while we still have a nice one.
Yeh, but one of the big things about the ST was that it was a kindler, gentler,
IBM-PC. (AN IBM with no segments!) That's no longer true.
Greg Lindahl
>Terminal programs are oriented towards computer geeks. They're spillover tech,
>but they're one of the most used items on any nerd's list of programs.
Well, Peter, if you can change your definitions at will and claim that
software that is used by non-computer nerds is actually nerd software
because you say it's so, then I withdraw my comment. I obviously
can't overcome your bias. Your prize, a pair of rose-tinted sunglasses,
is in the mail.
>> There is also a spreadsheet program for the ST which includes a full
>> set of math functions plus graphing, with a full GEM interface. This means
>> it's better than the original Visicalc. However, since I'm merely
>> destroying your *any* claim, I shan't submit it.
>
>Is it up to Lotus-123 level, or is it merely better than other Atari ST
>program?
There is a Lotus 1-2-3 clone for the ST. I hope you were not asuming
that ST software would naturally be less functional than software for
other machines. I'll also point out that many Lotus 1-2-3 features aren't
usable by end-users and are actually computer nerd features...
p.s. it turns out that you're right that rms wants to ban selling software,
and all vegetarians want to ban meat... I read about it in Time magazine!
A fur farmer said "first they'll ban fur, then leather, and then meat."
Gosh, and I didn't even know my own hidden agenda...
------
Greg Lindahl
Peter da Silva
> software that is used by non-computer nerds is actually nerd software
If you were willing to sit down and think about what I'm saying instead of
acting like a literal-minded idiot you'd see the point. Terminal programs are
computer-geek software because they're something that other computer-nerds
will look at and say "wow, you're a cool frood you" and give the guy who wrote
it an ego-boost. So he'll go back and do it again and make it better. Can't
you keep an argument straight for two messages in a row?
Spreadsheets aren't in the same category. Computer nerds don't get excited
about them.
> >Is it up to Lotus-123 level, or is it merely better than other Atari ST
> >program?
> There is a Lotus 1-2-3 clone for the ST. I hope you were not asuming
> that ST software would naturally be less functional than software for
> other machines.
Yep, all other things being equal. I'd expect that programs needing a lot
of RAM would be better on the ST, but all other things being equal there's
more people writing stuff for the IBM-PC.
> I'll also point out that many Lotus 1-2-3 features aren't
> usable by end-users and are actually computer nerd features...
They don't do anything Nerds really want to do. But I've seen some
accountants producing amazing things by abusing 1-2-3. At least I assume
they're amazing: not being an accountant I can't tell. Other bean-counters
seemed excited. That's another category of hot PD software: 123 macro
templates. Of course a non-123-compatible spreadsheet won't be able to use
it...
> p.s. it turns out that you're right that rms wants to ban selling software,
> and all vegetarians want to ban meat... I read about it in Time magazine!
Well, I read about it in the GNU manifesto.
> Gosh, and I didn't even know my own hidden agenda...
No, you probably do. But apparently you don't know or care abour RMSes.
Jon Allen Boone
> In article <4ZW1ijS00...@andrew.cmu.edu> jb...@andrew.cmu.edu (Jon Allen Boone) writes:
> >In fact, some claim that this
> >has been said "Write your own <smirk>" Well, that~s what rms did - he
> >didn~t like the actions that some group was taking, he had access to
> >their stuff, he reversed engineered the software and viola - he had a
> >version to use (or give away as i believe he did) and he didn~t have to
> >put up with the other people bs.
>
> No, he did *not* reverse engineer the software. Reverse engineering
> means that you take somebody's software, figure out exactly how it
> works, and write something which is implemented the same way (more or
> less). This is often illegal. He simply wrote more-or-less
> compatible replacements.
While you claim that he did not reverse engineer the software (which
is contrary to what i have heard and read - why not ask rms himself? i
think i will), other than a legal technicality, i can't see what the
difference is.
> >If no one is interested in BIOS, then why does Phoenix claim that
> >pirates are running them out of business?
>
> I don't know the details of this claim, but there are at least two
> distinct reasons for piracy: (1) to use software without paying for
> it, or (2) to make money by selling other people's software. I'm
> willing to bet that #2 is the only reason people would bother to
> pirate a BIOS implementation: so they could sell it more cheaply than
> Phoenix (since the pirates don't have to pay back their development
> costs).
Actually, that's not quite true. Some people pirate BIOS so that they
can get them for their PCs without having to pay for them. Sometimes,
they even give them away to others so that they too do not have to pay
for them.
> >Now, the fact that *most* pirates are high-school kids
>
> Bad assumption. Most pirates of game software may be high-school
> kids. Most pirates overall, though, are not: they're just average
> computer users. Corporations are bad at this. The average school
> pirates more software than all of the kids going to it.
That well may be - if so, then you should take it up with the
management of the corporations - after all, they are responsible for
hiring the people - perhaps universities should stress *ethics* in
business more. However, if it is true, then i find it hard to believe
that software companies too would be immune - thus i can find no
reason to sympathise with them when their software gets pirated in turn.
> >What you *can* say (and what i gather you are saying) is that given that
> >MicroSoft hadn~t written Excel or Word, you sure-as-blue-blazes wouldn~t
> >have either.
>
> If MicroSoft hadn't written Word, I suspect it would not have been
> written for a LONG time. I haven't got a steady enough source of
> income to be able to spend 20 years writing, debugging, testing, and
> writing manuals for a program like that. Even if I got together with
> 10 other people and we wrote it in three years, there's no way I would
> be willing to spend 3 years without any income for it. I can't afford
> to do that (not being independently wealthy).
Why is it that you think it would have taken 20 years? Perhaps you
work slowly, but i wouldn't think it would take you more than 6 months
worth of man-hours (which could stretch into 20 years! :-) ).
However, working full time on the project shouldn't take you 20 years!
Even if you got 3 people to work on it, it would take a long time - in
fact, it could well take longer - other programmers will have
different styles and methods that they wish to use - homogenization of
code is tough after having 3 or more people working on it.
> On the other hand, I can manage to spend 20-30 hours a week writing
> programs if I expect to make some money from it. I paid for three
> years of college with money from commercial software I've written. I
> wouldn't have been able to spend much time on it if I were doing it
> for free; I'd be working the 20-30 hours a week someplace where I
> could make money.
I work 20 - 30 hours a week, and go to school full-time - i don't have
as much time to program as i would like, granted, but then again, i
*waste* too much time doing things like playing tetris - my fault!
> Sure, I write free software from time to time. But I don't usually
> spend the time to write user manuals, add in features which aren't
> likely to be used by me or my friends, etc.
Why not? Do you normally write sloppy letters to your friends or
relatives? Do you even bother to write to your friends or relatives?
Someone on the irclist was saying that irc needs more professionalism,
and while it may or may not, i think that most PD software does. Just
because you are not paid doesn't mean you *shouldn't* do the best job
you are capable of doing. There once was such a thing as pride in
workmanship (which can, and should, extend to software).
> >Of course, you could alway says (with a tone of superiority) "well, if
> >you want it, then reverse engineer it!"
>
> If you want it, and you're not willing to pay me for my time and
> trouble, write it yourself--from scratch--since you obviously believe
> that it wasn't any work for me to write it in the first place.
You don't seem to realise that people do just that - however, in my
experience, they usually only implement the tools that they feel they
will need and will not bother trying to implement your entire program
if they do not need to. Also, they often will take their work with
them instead of releasing it in the PD for much the same reasons you
claim you don't write as much free software as you seem to think we
want you to.
> Anton
>
> +---------------------------+------------------+-------------+
> | Anton Rang (grad student) | ra...@cs.wisc.edu | UW--Madison |
> +---------------------------+------------------+-------------+
Jon Allen Boone
> Noice to hear. I've been getting the impression that the FSF folks see only
> two sides: themselves the likes of Apple.
It's true - it's true - some of us really *do* get carried away, don't
we?
> Not me. I couldn't care less if they released Bison or not. In fact I wish
> they weren't on the market. They're making it harder for the folks trying
> to get REALLY freely-redistributable stuff accepted.
Noted. I think that GNU could block free (as in NO-restrictions)
software from being accepted, as long as people don't distinguish
between Free software and what somone earlier called GNUfree software.
> Fine. No problem with that.
>
> The problem is that Microsoft doesn't try to assert rights over other people's
> source code. Apple does, but then I agree with the folks who call Apple
> unethical. I don't really see that much difference between RMS and Apple.
>
> Your argument *here* seems to be "RMS is more moral than Apple, therefore
> he's a saint.". I just think he's less of a scoundrel.
You're right, he is less of a scoundrel. The point is that there are
*no* saints - we're all scoundrels to some degree or another :-)
Better to hang your hat with a scoundrel like rms than with scoundrels
like Sculley and Jobs. Also, Gates is no saint, either.
> BIOS is software.
Used to run hardware! (but, of course, you knew that!)
> Maybe they are. It's *expensive* to reverse-engineer IBM's bugs.
True. And *time* consuming. You can also get a severe case of
insomnia just from contemplating the task. I, for one, can't figure
out why the guys did it. Unless it was for fun, money, or slack.
> I haven't seen *any* PD software that wasn't either (a) oriented towards
> computer geeks, or (b) strictly limited in utility. Prove me wrong. Provide
> a counter-example.
I don't deal in PD software for the most part. That is - the software
i use is either a) licensed by the university (saving me the cost of
doing so myself) or b) contributed by the users: note: this is not
necessarily PD software - it still belongs to the people who wrote it
- but it is available for public use and sometimes public perusal.
> Never even implied they were.
Fine. That's not what i read into your posts, but that is *my*
problem.
> Hell no. I'm a computer nerd. And proud of it.
Takes one to know one, right? Funny thing that - most of us *are*
proud to be computer nerds.
> I have a spreadsheet. It's called SC. It's freely redistributable. It's
> also pretty limited by comparison with commercial versions.
Did you write it? Did the authors not understand how to write a
spreadsheet (not an uncommon thing in PD software, i suppose)? Did
they not have enough time, interest, slack?
> It's no fun.
Well, if it's no fun for you, what makes you think it wouldn't be fun
for someone else. Now, *i* don't write one, cuz i don't know *how*.
> [ long discussion of how he works for free and lives off my tax money ]
I seriously *doubt* that i live off of *your* tax money - most of
*your* tax money goes to defense and the war on the
constitution...er...i mean drugs. All in all, i probably see maybe
about $1 or so of your tax money, if you pay a *whole lot of taxes*.
So, tell you what .... you give me your address, and i'll send you $1.
Also, i *dont'* work for free. I get *paid* to watch the cluster.
Part of my limited responsibilities are helping users. Most of the
time, though, i help users, even when i'm *not* getting paid. Also, i
don't charge $25 to $50 an hour, cuz i'm not *comfortable with that
price range*. You, of course, might be.
> Go ahead and charge for your services.
I do.
> Hell no. I'm all in favor of free software. I write free software. And I write
> for-pay software. I just don't agree with coercing people to write free
> software.
Assuming there is something wrong with coercion in the first place,
then i would have to agree with you. However, i'm still not sure that
there's anything wrong with coercion. Note: i do not *like* to be
coerced, but then again, if i did, it wouldn't be coercion, now would
it?
> Them's fighting words. Remember: 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.
Depends on what you consider hard work (ie. perspiration) I *like* to
debug programs, especially mine (good thing too - most of my programs
have more bugs than a swamp in the summer time). Others consider
this the "hard" part of programming.
> I've done it, when I needed to. I'd certainly like to have more source
> available. I just don't feel justified in forcing people to give it
to me.
That's understandable. I don't feel justified in forcing peopel to
give me $50 an hour. To each his own.
> --
> Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva <pe...@sugar.hackercorp.com>
> `-_-'
> 'U` "I haven't lost my mind, it's backed up on tape somewhere"
Mike (With friends like these, who needs hallucinations) Meyer
Sorry, that's not correct. Paragraph 2b of the GPV specifically forces
you to place all of your program under its terms if you use any GNU code
in it. This is the virus effect I refer to.
That's mostly correct. It's wonderful. If I write code for Digital, it
belongs to them, and there's much work involved in releasing it to the
world. If I use GNU code, then the work has already been done, and I
can release it as is.
The one thing you've got wrong is that you don't have to place your
code under the GNU license if you don't release it. Since Digital
can't use their standard technics to make $s off code under the GPL,
they don't lose anything by allowing the release of such code.
<mike
--
--
Tell me how d'you get to be Mike Meyer
As beautiful as that? m...@berkeley.edu
How did you get your mind ucbvax!mwm
To tilt like your hat? m...@ucbjade.BITNET
David C Lawrence
> p.s. it turns out that you're right that rms wants to ban selling software,
> and all vegetarians want to ban meat... I read about it in Time magazine!
Peter da Silva:
> Well, I read about it in the GNU manifesto.
Where? Quotes please, from the GNU Manifesto. Maybe I'm developing
Alzheimer's disease or something but I do not remember him saying he
wanted to ban selling software. I've even asked him whether he wants
such a thing and he says no. He has not said anything about legally
making you, or Miles, or Apple, or anyone else unable to sell
software.
Peter must be tired of hearing this from me. I know I am tired of
seeing him say things like this. It is very curious; I have a lot of
respect for Peter and even agree with him on a lot of other issues on
the net. But everytime I see him report things wrongly about GNU like
this, and I point it out, I never see either a rebuttal or an
admission of error. He just waits a couple of months and then says it
again. What gives?
Dave
--
(setq mail '("ta...@cs.rpi.edu" "ta...@ai.mit.edu" "ta...@rpitsmts.bitnet"))
Rodney Peck II
[ quote deleted ... Dave asking Peter for a quote to cover his
assertation that he "read about it in the GNU manifesto."
Tale> Peter must be tired of hearing this from me. I know I am tired of
Tale> seeing him say things like this. It is very curious; I have a lot of
Tale> respect for Peter and even agree with him on a lot of other issues on
Tale> the net.
Ditto.
I just noticed recently in fact that they were the same person. I had
associated that wolf sorta signature with well thought out messages,
but these sorts of things are just off the cuff sort of jabs which
aren't based in fact, but still cause problems with their falsity
because it's just the sort of thing that some people want to hear.
--
Rodney
Peter da Silva
> *no* saints - we're all scoundrels to some degree or another :-)
> Better to hang your hat with a scoundrel like rms than with scoundrels
> like Sculley and Jobs. Also, Gates is no saint, either.
I choose not to hang my hat with any scoundrels if I can help it.
> > I have a spreadsheet. It's called SC. It's freely redistributable. It's
> > also pretty limited by comparison with commercial versions.
> Did you write it?
Nah.
> Did the authors not understand how to write a
> spreadsheet (not an uncommon thing in PD software, i suppose)? Did
> they not have enough time, interest, slack?
I think they made it do the things they needed done, and left it at that.
> Assuming there is something wrong with coercion in the first place,
Well, I've occasionally been accused of being a libertarian. But then I've
also been accused of being a right-winger. I dunno.
> > Them's fighting words. Remember: 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.
> Depends on what you consider hard work (ie. perspiration) I *like* to
> debug programs,
Yeh, but how about writing documentation?
Ted Lemon
Peter da Silva writes:
>If you were willing to sit down and think about what I'm saying instead of
>acting like a literal-minded idiot you'd see the point. Terminal programs are
>computer-geek software because they're something that other computer-nerds
>will look at and say "wow, you're a cool frood you" and give the guy who wrote
>it an ego-boost. So he'll go back and do it again and make it better. Can't
>you keep an argument straight for two messages in a row?
Peter, this is an ad hominem argument. If you wish to be considered
worth listening to, I strongly recommend that you reread whatever you
have to say and delete *all* ad hominem arguments, no matter how
annoyed you are at the other poster.
My general reaction to arguments like yours (the non- ad hominem
arguments, that is) is anger. Why? Because it's so pointless to be
discussing this.
This is a free country. Everybody is pretty much allowed to do what
they want to until they start abridging the rights of others. In
recent times, these rights have been more and more abridged for lesser
and lesser reasons.
Today, your right to own property is in jeopardy because of the
government's "War on Drugs." So is your freedom of speech. Some
people in the Bible Belt would like to see you forced to worship God
their way. Fortunately, many others do not want this. The media is
censoring itself because it's uneconomical to show unpalatable stories
to the Amurkan People. In some states, you can be sentenced to ten
years in jail, according to the Supreme Court of the United States of
America, for giving your wife head.
In this climate of increased government involvement in the most
personal aspects of our day-to-day lives, you are arguing that we
should ask the government to step in *yet again* and take away another
basic freedom that's been present, de facto, since before the
ratification of the Bill of Rights.
I would like to ask you, Peter, just how much your freedom to make
software is worth to the people of the United States. Will Bill
"Stump" Watkins of Frozen Glen, North Dakota, a wheat farmer, have a
better life because you wrote The Great Program? Will Winona Trumbley
get over the horror of seeing her husband shot fifteen times in front
of a burning cross because of the program you write? (The people
mentioned in this paragraph are not intended to resemble any person,
living or dead.)
Peter, you and I are incredibly fortunate. In today's world, at least
in developed countries, intelligence is valued much more highly than
any other attribute. If you are smart, and you know how to make use
of your smarts, you will never want for any of the basic necessities
of life. Furthermore, you will be able to provide yourself with
better therapy for any personal problems you may have than the best
psychotherapist or NLP trainer in the world. If you make use of your
intelligence, you will become a happy, fulfilled person.
There are people in the world who do not have your advantages. A few
weeks ago, I was at a friend's house, and a man knocked on the door.
He walked into the house, and told us that somebody had been messing
with my BMW motorcycle, which was parked out front. He then
proceeded to hit us up for eight dollars to pay for a room in a
transient hotel. He took off his jacket and essentially
strip-searched himself to show us that he wasn't armed. He abased
himself in front of us.
How would you like to be in that poor man's position? How would you
like it if the only thing you had of any value at all was your ability
to work, and if you lived in a society where manual labour was
considered low and meaningless, so that you never even had the chance
to build up enough pride in yourself to be able to look someone in the
eye and say, ``I'm worth something to you! Hire me!''
Let me tell you something, Peter. You are worth something. But
you're not so important that you should be given a government-enforced
grant to rake in money at the cost of the advancement of the state of
the art. Good things can be done with software, and with computers.
But the good things that get done with them aren't the amazing
spreadsheets that let people count their money ten times faster than
they used to. The recent stock market scares are evidence of that.
The value of good software is in its ability to improve the human
condition. It's in the ability to make somebody's work less
frustrating. It's in the ability to simulate the total effect of a
new drug on the human system. It's in the ability to examine the
genetic code, and turn off the bit that says, ``this man shall be
blind'', or ``this woman shall die of cancer''. It's in the ability
to give that man who abased himself in my friend's living room a
chance to be happy, and to feel good about himself. I don't know how
to accomplish all these things, but frankly, I do know that making a
few people obcenely wealthy just isn't the way.
_MelloN_
Greg Lindahl
In article <47...@sugar.hackercorp.com>, Peter sez:
>In article <1989Dec18....@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> gl...@bessel.acc.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl) writes:
>> Well, Peter, if you can change your definitions at will and claim that
>> software that is used by non-computer nerds is actually nerd software
>
>If you were willing to sit down and think about what I'm saying instead of
>acting like a literal-minded idiot you'd see the point.
I still don't get your point. You gave some scenario in which nerds
would sit around encouraging the author of a PD terminal program. That
isn't how this particular terminal program was written. So your point
has no point whatsoever. Therefore you are making silly definitions.
Read Plato's _Republic_ and you'll see what I'm talking about.
So, I place the challenge to the net: Can anyone come up with general-interst
free software which is as good as similar commercial software? Good luck
with Peter, though, he likes to make some strange distinctions.
Now, the end of my previous posting was a sarcastic comment on the
joke posting I made earlier comparing RMS to a vegetarian and saying
that just because a vegetarian thinks eating meat is unethical doesn't
mean that they wish to outlaw meat. It seems that Peter missed that I
was making a joke, and moreover, missed the point of the joke. Too bad
he's a literal-minded idiot. Next time I will append smilies.
>> p.s. it turns out that you're right that rms wants to ban selling software,
>> and all vegetarians want to ban meat... I read about it in Time magazine!
>
>Well, I read about it in the GNU manifesto.
Please give a quote where the Manifesto states that FSF intends to ban
all selling of software. There is no such reference. You are dead wrong.
>> Gosh, and I didn't even know my own hidden agenda...
>
>No, you probably do. But apparently you don't know or care abour RMSes.
If you believe RMS has some hidden agenda, I'd suggest you write or
call him to find out if your hunch is right. He's a person, not the
AntiChrist. Honestly, Peter, when someone says GNU your brain shuts
down.
I hope that you can come up with some new arguments so that 3 months
later you aren't making the same incorrect claims about the FSF's goals.
------
Greg Lindahl
Peter da Silva
> Peter must be tired of hearing this from me.
Yeh, real tired.
> I know I am tired of seeing him say things like this.
That RMS believes selling software is just plain wrong? That the GPL is
designed to force people to give software away? What is it that you think
I'm saying that I can't support? RMS has stated that it's wrong to sell
software at a price that will allow you to recover your development costs:
he wants you to give it away for effectively media charge. If you use any
GNU code in your program, it falls under section 2b of the license and you
have to give it away.
> But everytime I see him report things wrongly about GNU like
> this, and I point it out, I never see either a rebuttal or an
> admission of error.
Sure you do. You tell me I'm wrong. I repeat the paragraph above in some form
or other, and you either ignore it or tell me that I didn't mean what I
thought I said.
> He just waits a couple of months and then says it
> again. What gives?
Damned if I know.
Peter da Silva
> Peter, this is an ad hominem argument. If you wish to be considered
> worth listening to, I strongly recommend that you reread whatever you
> have to say and delete *all* ad hominem arguments, no matter how
> annoyed you are at the other poster.
I'm not going to apologise for anything I've said here, and I'm not going
to delete anything, either. The person I was responding to is either
deliberately goading me, or is actually so busy making his point that he
literally doesn't read what I've written. He is, in fact, acting like a
literal-minded idiot... either because that's what he is or because he
knows that his own argument is without support and he wishes to draw
attention away from it.
> My general reaction to arguments like yours (the non- ad hominem
> arguments, that is) is anger. Why? Because it's so pointless to be
> discussing this.
Now this is strange. What argument (the non-ad-hominem ones) of mine is
it that drives you to this anger? Particularly (as you go on to say) on
civil-libertarian grounds. I'm at a complete loss as to what it is that
you're getting upset about...
> In this climate of increased government involvement in the most
> personal aspects of our day-to-day lives, you are arguing that we
> should ask the government to step in *yet again* and take away another
> basic freedom that's been present, de facto, since before the
> ratification of the Bill of Rights.
No sir, it's RMS that's trying to take away our rights. Intellectual property
rights are just as real as any other.
> I would like to ask you, Peter, just how much your freedom to make
> software is worth to the people of the United States. Will Bill
> "Stump" Watkins of Frozen Glen, North Dakota, a wheat farmer, have a
> better life because you wrote The Great Program?
If he uses electrical power in any way, shape, or form... yes. If he uses
oil or petrochemical products... yes.
I'm in the SCADA business. I make a living writing software to control
industrial processes. Right now my job is maintaining the development
systems for some hundreds of programmers, and porting select portions of
that code to the development system. I've also been involved in writing
part of the control software itself. In my previous job I worked on trackside
analysers: safety equipment for railroads. I've also written programs to
support oil drilling, oil production, and so on.
Much of this code has run on off-the-shelf equipment. It's cheaper that way:
that is, it makes better use of available resources. It would probably not
have been possible to make a profit on any of this software if it wasn't
for copyrights, licenses, and so on. If any of our competitors could have
just picked up the code, stuck it in their own boxes, and run with it...
the code would never have been written. Nobody would have invested the man-
years involved in writing this code.
> Let me tell you something, Peter. You are worth something. But
> you're not so important that you should be given a government-enforced
> grant to rake in money at the cost of the advancement of the state of
> the art.
Funny, I can't see any such grant out there. I work hard for my money, and
create a great deal of wealth for other people in the process. People like
you, and like all the people you've been writing about. Because I make it
possible for the economy to operate more efficiently, on fewer resources.
> Good things can be done with software, and with computers.
> But the good things that get done with them aren't the amazing
> spreadsheets that let people count their money ten times faster than
> they used to.
No. That was merely an example. Something that I presumed people would be
able to appreciate. I'm sure that the details of the Ensun Track Side
Analyser or the Hydril Micro-master or Ferranti's Ranger system would be
stunningly boring to most of the people here.
> The value of good software is in its ability to improve the human
> condition. It's in the ability to make somebody's work less
> frustrating. It's in the ability to simulate the total effect of a
> new drug on the human system. It's in the ability to examine the
> genetic code, and turn off the bit that says, ``this man shall be
> blind'', or ``this woman shall die of cancer''. It's in the ability
> to give that man who abased himself in my friend's living room a
> chance to be happy, and to feel good about himself. I don't know how
> to accomplish all these things, but frankly, I do know that making a
> few people obcenely wealthy just isn't the way.
I know a way to accomplish these things. Use software instead of hardware,
because it's more efficient a use of resources. But making software free,
making software valueless, isn't going to accomplish that. Because it's going
to take a lot of hard work to create that software...
And the best way to make sure it gets written is by giving it a value and
letting the market system work. Depending on people's good will has a
devastatingly poor track record.
Peter da Silva
anything I said:
> I still don't get your point. You gave some scenario in which nerds
> would sit around encouraging the author of a PD terminal program. That
> isn't how this particular terminal program was written. So your point
> has no point whatsoever. Therefore you are making silly definitions.
Victor Kan
>
>In article <47...@sugar.hackercorp.com>, Peter sez:
>>In article <1989Dec18....@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> gl...@bessel.acc.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl) writes:
[long discussion about nerds, nerd egotism, etc.]
Isn't it amazing how participants in two of the newest "sciences,"
psychology and computer science, have similar rhetoric?
(This isn't what is directly taught; it's just the result as I hear
it from people (albeit undergrads :-) who study psychology.)
Pscyhology -
EVERY boy loves his mother, EVERY girl loves her father,
EVERY human is homosexual deep down inside
This may be true of those who espouse this, but certainly
not EVERY person.
Computer Science -
EVERY person who likes to study/use/program computers is a nerd.
EVERY person who likes to write useful, free programs does it for
praise from other nerds.
This may be true of those who espouse this, but certainly
not EVERY person.
Its also funny that those who don't study psychology and computer science
hold similar beliefs regarding those who do.
>So, I place the challenge to the net: Can anyone come up with general-interst
>free software which is as good as similar commercial software? Good luck
>with Peter, though, he likes to make some strange distinctions.
Berkeley Yacc (see comp.compilers) is getting there.
It's freely available by ftp from ucbarpa.berkeley.edu and is without
GNU-like restrictions. It's not a part of BSD (at least not yet)
and has been declared public domain by the author, Bob Corbett.
I just verified its public domain status by reading the README file
in the distribution.
BYACC is supposed to be compatible with AT&T YACC as defined by widely
available documentation. Since it's new and quite complex, it's bound
to be buggy, but it's free software which is as good as similar
commercial software.
I don't know how "general-interest" a YACC clone may be, but where I work,
in a language development department, it's quite general-interest.
But since EVERY computer nerd likes to write compilers, BYACC should be of
very general interest :-).
>If you believe RMS has some hidden agenda, I'd suggest you write or
>call him to find out if your hunch is right. He's a person, not the
>AntiChrist. Honestly, Peter, when someone says GNU your brain shuts
>down.
I use GNU stuff all the time and love it. But remember RMS' juxtaposition
with MIT, home of RADICAL dudes like Marvin Minsky and Noam Chomsky.
>Greg Lindahl
>
| Victor Kan | I speak only for myself. | ***
| Data General Corporation | Edito cum Emacs, ergo sum. | ****
| 62 T.W. Alexander Drive | Columbia Lions Win, 9 October 1988 for | **** %%%%
| RTP, NC 27709 | a record of 1-44. Way to go, Lions! | *** %%%
Anton Rang
>While you claim that he did not reverse engineer the software (which
>is contrary to what i have heard and read - why not ask rms himself? i
>think i will), other than a legal technicality, i can't see what the
>difference is.
The basic difference is that in one case, the *functionality* of the
software is being duplicated. In the other (what I've usually heard
referred to as "reverse engineering"), the *implementation* is being
duplicated. If you know a lawyer in copyright/patent law, you might
check with them (I probably will over break).
>Actually, that's not quite true. Some people pirate BIOS so that they
>can get them for their PCs without having to pay for them.
Note that pirating a BIOS requires copying ROMs. This requires
equipment that the average user doesn't have.
>That well may be - if so, then you should take it up with the
>management of the corporations
Yes, and various companies have done so (Lotus in particular has
been starting multi-million dollar suits for copyright infringement).
>However, if it is true, then i find it hard to believe
>that software companies too would be immune
It's entirely possible that some software companies do pirate
others' software. There are others which don't. There are
non-software companies which don't, too.
>thus i can find no
>reason to sympathise with them when their software gets pirated in turn.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
>Why is it that you think it [MSWord] would have taken 20 years?
If I could work fulltime on it, I could probably do it within 3-5
years. Maybe. A word processor is a complicated piece of machinery,
when it incorporates page layout, table management, etc. I haven't
written a WYSIWYG word processor yet, either, so would probably make a
false start or two.
At a rough guess, designing the user interface would take 6 months,
writing the manual 6 months, polishing loose ends 3-6 months (i.e.
user testing), and thorough debugging 6 months. This leaves perhaps a
year to write the program, on a 3-year schedule.
Maybe 20 years was a bit of an exaggeration, but if I weren't
getting paid for it, I wouldn't be spending 40-60 hours a week on it,
either.
>Even if you got 3 people to work on it, it would take a long time - in
>fact, it could well take longer
It's unlikely it would take longer (in real time) on a project which
is reasonably large (like this). 3 people isn't so many that
management becomes a problem.
>> Sure, I write free software from time to time. But I don't usually
>> spend the time to write user manuals, add in features which aren't
>> likely to be used by me or my friends, etc.
>
>Why not?
There's a very simple reason: I write these programs to save me time
(this is one major reason I use computers). If I try to think of
everything anyone might want in them, and implement that, they're not
saving me time any more. If I need some graphics for a paper which is
due in a week, spending more than a week writing a graphics program is
counterproductive.
>Do you normally write sloppy letters to your friends or relatives?
No, and I don't write sloppy code either. On the other hand, when
writing to a friend, I don't mention everything which has happened in
my life, either--just the things which probably interest them
(otherwise my letters would be far too long and never get done!).
>Just because you are not paid doesn't mean you *shouldn't* do the
>best job you are capable of doing.
I agree, and I do. When I write a utility, it's programmed as well
as I can do it. That doesn't necessarily mean that it has a polished
user interface, or that it has lots of extra features. It just means
that what it does, it does well.
David C Lawrence
> rights are just as real as any other.
This is very much a sticky issue. His only legal position regarding
rights is with regard to whether he should be allowed to programme
things which look like something someone else has already programmed.
It is just as easy to say that the people who would not allow him the
freedom to do that and distribute the results are taking away his rights.
He has not attempted to get any legislation enacted, merely protested
the likes of look and feel suits.
Greg Lindahl
>I don't know where you get these fantasies, but the following doesn't describe
>anything I said:
>
>> [ greg lindahl writes]
>>
>> I still don't get your point. You gave some scenario in which nerds
>> would sit around encouraging the author of a PD terminal program. That
>> isn't how this particular terminal program was written. So your point
>> has no point whatsoever. Therefore you are making silly definitions.
In article <47...@sugar.hackercorp.com>, Peter da Silva sez:
>If you were willing to sit down and think about what I'm saying instead of
>acting like a literal-minded idiot you'd see the point. Terminal programs are
>computer-geek software because they're something that other computer-nerds
>will look at and say "wow, you're a cool frood you" and give the guy who wrote
>it an ego-boost. So he'll go back and do it again and make it better. Can't
>you keep an argument straight for two messages in a row?
As for your claim that I am either goading you or am a 'literal-minded
idiot', I am not attempting to goad you, and I am attempting to understand
your arguments to the extent that my mind can. I would suggest that if you
wish to assault my motives or my intelligence that you do so in email,
so that you won't waste net.bandwidth.
Have a nice day, Peter, and don't use any code from someone else unless
you check the copyright first.
------
Greg Lindahl
Anton Rang
>In article <1989Dec20.0...@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> gl...@bessel.acc.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl) writes:
>>So, I place the challenge to the net: Can anyone come up with general-interst
(not just "nerds" :-)
>>free software which is as good as similar commercial software? Good luck
>>with Peter, though, he likes to make some strange distinctions.
>
I've been reading "general interest" as "of interest to computer
users, as opposed to nerds." For nerds, read "hacker", "programmer",
or "highly computer-literate type" (take your pick).
I still haven't come up with any PD software which is targeted
toward non-computer types, and as good as commercially available
software doing similar things. I'm sure there must be a few cases out
there (I've probably run into some); I just haven't thought of any
yet....
Peter da Silva
"Terminal programs are computer-geek software because they're something that
other computer-nerds will look at and say "wow, you're a cool frood you" and
give the guy who wrote it an ego-boost. So he'll go back and do it again and
make it better."
Greg said:
> I still don't get your point. You gave some scenario in which nerds
> would sit around encouraging the author of a PD terminal program. That
> isn't how this particular terminal program was written. So your point
> has no point whatsoever. Therefore you are making silly definitions.
Now back to your regularly scheduled flame:
While your message could be used to describe the same situation as mine, it
gives rise to the ludicrous picture of a bunch of socially malajusted
individuals sitting around the computer chanting "Go, Go, Go...".
That's hardly the same as seeing your name in the PD section of your local
computer magazine, or getting feedback from your local BBS. Both of these
are positive feedback from computer freaks, and that's about the only place
you're going to get any response from the world at large.
Tone and phrasing are pretty important.
So why was this particular terminal program written?