Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!indri!ames!apple!landon
From: landon@Apple.COM (Landon Dyer)
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Media cost
Message-ID: <33473@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 26 Jul 89 00:49:31 GMT
Organization: Apple Computer Inc., Cupertino, CA
Lines: 50


If you wanted to hoard (horrors!) your massive changes to the GNU stuff,
would the following work?

The GNU license doesn't appear to require that you distribute source code on
media that's economically reasonable.  Yet you can charge for media.  The
point behind all of the following schemes is to require the customer to pay,
UP FRONT, an absolutely unbeleivable machine-readable media cost.  If no one
can afford the media, you're home free and your source is safe as houses.


For instance, you could insist on media that's...

  o  Completely silly.  "Sure, we'll give you a copy!  We'll start melting
     the wax for the tablets as soon as your check clears.  We'll even sell
     you a wax-tablet reader if you don't have one -- they're the wave of
     the future!"

  o  Proprietary.  "Sure, we'll send it to you on our patented counter-clock-
     wise spinning 10,000 RPM CD-ROM, as soon as your check clears."

  o  Marginally useless.  "By using a 1-point font, we can squeeze it all
     onto just a few sheets of newsprint.  Of course, you have to hold it
     over a light-bulb in order to develop the lemon juice."  [Newsprint is
     arguably machine readable, if you have a REALLY good scanner.  And
     who said anything about introducing errors?]

  o  Just plain expensive.  At first glance, "machine readable" seems to
     preclude reading it over the phone ("One, zero, one...") -- but I
     think you could insist, since voice recognition of "one" and "zero"
     is pretty well solved.  The guy rolling off the binary simply does so,
     collect, from Zimbabwe.


Even if the GNU license mandated "magnetic tape, floppy disk or hard disk,"
I'll bet you could STILL do something about it.


Now, I'd never do this myself, or encourage anyone else to.  I'm NOT a
lawyer, so I don't know if it would work.  Besides, I rather like the GNU
stuff -- I simply don't like the bloody politics.


I duck and cover.  I await hate-mail.... :-)

-----------------------------------------
Landon Dyer, Apple Computer, Inc.          "Abstraction of Steel,
Development Systems Group (MPW)             Run-Time of Kleenex."
Everything I said here is utter nonsense.