Xref: utzoo news.admin:6397 news.groups:11136 gnu.misc.discuss:22
Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!cica!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!epimass!jbuck
From: jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.groups,gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: Changes to Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies
Message-ID: <3450@epimass.EPI.COM>
Date: 27 Jul 89 17:02:47 GMT
References: <7429@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <323@ncis.tis.llnl.gov>
Reply-To: jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck)
Followup-To: news.admin
Organization: Entropic Processing, Inc., Cupertino, CA
Lines: 36

In article <323@ncis.tis.llnl.gov> mcb@ncis.tis.llnl.gov (Michael C. Berch) writes:
>I question the appropriateness of the use of publicly-funded educational
>and government networks (both on the Internet mailing list side and
>the gnu.* Usenet side) for organized private political advocacy.

Good.  Then one thinks you should be in alignment with attempts by RMS
and others to discourage political discussion in gnu.emacs and
gnu.gcc.  These groups are technical; they are devoted to answering
questions about, and maintaining, software that is in wide use throughout
"publicly funded educational and government networks".  Their purpose
is not to discuss software property rights or lawsuits.

To be consistent, RMS and others should also desist from pro-GNU
political flaming, attacks on Apple, etc., on groups other than
gnu.misc.discuss.  I hope Apple loses that lawsuit too, but if the gnu
groups continue to be dominated by Apple-trashing and suppression of
people who want to defend the "other side", FSF might suffer
considerably.  RMS's statement comparing Apple to the Chinese
government shooting students was an extremely foolish one, for
example.

Talk about funding and free rides seems foolish in this case.  FSF has
saved the government and universities quite a bit of money by
providing GNU Emacs to people who would otherwise pay Unipress or CCA
hundreds of dollars for it, and has advanced academic computer science
considerably by providing a high-quality compiler that students
actually get to study the design of.

Newsgroup names are keywords only.  To say "do not discuss topic X
in newsgroup Y" is only censorship if there is no other available
forum for such discussion.  There are plenty.



-- 
-- Joe Buck	jbuck@epimass.epi.com, uunet!epimass.epi.com!jbuck