Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!rutgers!njin!limonce From: limonce@pilot.njin.net (Tom Limoncelli) Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: Borland and other proprietary bloodsuckers (Was: Re: BISON, GCC, and the GNU public license.) Message-ID: Date: 6 Aug 89 19:05:51 GMT References: <26@ark1.nswc.navy.mil> <68726@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> <5559@ficc.uu.net> Organization: Drew University/NJIN Lines: 34 In article <5559@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: [ much deleted ] > Have a look at the subject under discussion. Has Borland ever required you > to: > a) Buy time on any hardware. > b) Require that anyone you write code for also buy Borland products? > Or, for that matter: > c) Charged your royalties on your programs? Bing! When Borland started out, they were charging a *lot* of money for royalties. One of their original strategies was "so many people will buy our $79 compiler, that if 1% goes commercial, we'll be rich!" (also, back then you could only buy directly from them, so while uSoft was seeing $100 of the $300 you spent on their compiler, Borland was seeing $79 of the $79 you spent). Of course, people complained about the royalties (a Mr. J.P. of Byte fame included) and they changed their strategy. This is not a flame, just a correction. Personally, I think both sides are wrong and that we should go back to the old days of computing. To own a computer you had to hire a staff of people to design, build, and program it. Want a program? Have them write it. Does someone else want a copy? Too bad, incompatible vacuum tubes. Want a word processor? Sorry, you only have enough storage for a paragraph. Deal. Gimme that ol' time computin' :-) > Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation. -- Tom Limoncelli -- tlimonce@drunivac.Bitnet -- limonce@pilot.njin.net Drew University -- Box 1060, Madison, NJ -- 201-408-5389 Standard Disclaimer: I am not the mouth-piece of Drew University