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From: mwm@eris.berkeley.edu (Mike (I'll think of something yet) Meyer)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: BISON, GCC, and the GNU public license. (Re: increasing yacc states)
Message-ID: <26947@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 4 Aug 89 00:46:42 GMT
References: <Jul.5.09.29.33.1989.23541@topaz.rutgers.edu> <26@ark1.nswc.navy.mil> <26880@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <5486@ficc.uu.net>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: mwm@eris.berkeley.edu (Mike (I'll think of something yet) Meyer)
Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica
Lines: 137

In article <5486@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
<In article <26880@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, mwm@eris.berkeley.edu (Mike (I'll think of something yet) Meyer) writes:
<> In article <5361@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
<> <In article <26759@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, mwm@eris.berkeley.edu (Mike (I'll think of something yet) Meyer) writes:
<[ about GNU being about giving away neat tools to my friends ]
<>
<> <This is the silliest argument for the FSF that I've ever seen. I don't *need*
<> <the GNU PUBLIC LICENSE to give away neat software to my friends. I just do
<> <it.
<
<> Do you tell the people who hold the copyrights on those tools that
<> you're doing that?
<
<Since either I own the copyrights on these tools, or they're stuff I got
<through comp.sources.* (of which a vanishingly small percentage are GNU
<stuff)... no.

You mean you don't have any neat tools that are commercial software?
Certainly doesn't say much for commecial software.

<Semantics. Quibbling. If I can't do what I want with a compiler I wrote
<because I used Bison to compile it, I don't own it any more.

By that logic, I don't own copies of any of the software I write using
commercial tools, because I can't do what I want with it. What I want
to do is give someone everything they need to change it to suit their
needs.

<But when they extend this to sections of code that
<are purely intended for inclusion in another... such as a library or
<parser skeleton... that might be legal but it's neither fair, ethical,
<or moral.

Gee, that's how I feel about any tool that's purely intended for
building tools that I can't redistribute: that such limitations are
legal, but aren't fair, ethical or moral.

<> This should be compared with commercial
<> tools, where it doesn't matter how skillfull you are, you just have to
<> be rich.
<
<You keep making this claim, but it's not backed up by reality. The
<highly restrictive licensing agreements, where you have to pay huge
<amounts of royalties to distribute binaries, are a thing of the past.
<The *market* has spoken. Borland has done more for poor programmers
<than the Free Software Foundation.

My fault - I didn't specify everything. I expected the rest of the
context to make my meaning clear, and it obviously didn't.  I didn't
mean that you had to be rich to distribute things built with
commercial tools, but that you had to be rich to buy them. Or are
there commercial tools that have no monetary charge associated with
them?

<If you're not rich you can't afford a computer big enough to use GCC
<in the first place anyway. It needs, what, something on the order of
<a megabyte of stack? It's cheaper to buy a PC and Microsoft C.

You're paying to much for your memory, then.

<> You didn't say it, but I don't think I misreprestented your position.
<> You don't want FSF exercising their copyrights on derivative works if
<> it's not an obvious derivation.
<
<No, I don't want the FSF excersizing their copyrights on works intended
<to be used as part of someone else's code. Libraries, the Bison Parser
<Skeleton. That sort of thing. Stuff you can't use at all without including
<it in your code, and which has to be included in your code if you want to
<use the GNU tools.

You just said what I claimed you said: "I don't want the FSF
exersizing their copyrights". And you accuse _them_ of being unfair?

<> Correct. However, I don't see any commercial license agreement that
<> doesn't require that either I buy time on the target hardware, or that
<> the owner of the target hardware buy the commercial product, if I want
<> them to have a trivial installation process.
<
<Check out any of Borland's products, Microsoft C, Lattice C, Lattice C++,
<Aztec C, or any of the other microcomputer compiler vendors.

I did. All of them do have that requirement. If I want to let someone
run code I develop, I either have to have time on a machine similar
enough to theirs to build a binary for them, or they have to have a
compiler. The sole exception is that some of these people market cross
compilers, so I can get by with time on a machine that the cross
compiler runs on and buying the cross compiler. Big help.

<> Given the current memory prices, not buying a single commercial
<> compiler would pay for that ram.
<
<Not so. You can't buy enough memory to run GNU on any IBM-PC or
<clone for any amount of money. I doubt if you could get it to run
<on an 80286 at all.

In which case, they obviously have no problems whatsoever with the GNU
copyleft. RMS doesn't choose to produce tools for these machines. That
means they lose an option available to others. You think RMS should be
forced to write for those people also?

<Now I must admit that my machine at home, and Amiga 1000 with 4.5 Meg
<of RAM, is more competant... but still the RAM on that machine costs
<a lot more than the $400 I spent on my C compiler.

Yes, but that's a lot more ram than you need to run GCC. Last time I
looked, $400 would buy you an extra meg or two over the original 1/2.
That should do the trick.

<> Sorry, but you're wrong. People have sold compilers with yearly rental
<> fees and requirements for royalties. Those set a nice precedent.
<
<Yearly rental fees and royalties are in no way equivalent to forcing
<people to give away sources.

I didn't say that they were equivalent, I said they set a nice
precedent.

<I'll see you later. This is getting tiresome. You keep pushing arguments
<that haven't been even vaguely valid in 10 years, or that won't be valid
<for another 10. Meanwhile, I find it more useful to live in the present.

Your sense of time is broken - maybe because you spend to much time on
the present, and not enough examining the past or the future. But your
sense of tiresome isn't. We keep going away from the central point,
which is that there are _lots_ of ways to make money off of copylefted
works. Unless you choose to talk about that point, I'm going to drop
the thread too.

Final comment: you seem to care an awful lot about the licensing
restrictions on software you don't use.

	<mike
--
And then up spoke his own dear wife,			Mike Meyer
Never heard to speak so free.				mwm@berkeley.edu
"I'd rather a kiss from dead Matty's lips,		ucbvax!mwm
Than you or your finery."				mwm@ucbjade.BITNET