Path: utzoo!telly!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen
From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: Stallman's attitude
Message-ID: <1885@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Date: 7 Dec 89 14:33:47 GMT
References: <8041@stiatl.UUCP>
Organization: GE Corp R&D Center, Schenectady NY
Lines: 31
Reply-exos:@crdgw1:To: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com (bill davidsen)

In article <8041@stiatl.UUCP> meo@stiatl.UUCP (Miles O'Neal) writes:

| Mr. Stallman has declared legal war on everyone who writes software
| and thinks they should be able to charge for it, but I have yet to
| see the justification for this. There may be some - I'm just saying
| I haven't seen it.

  I think you're overstating a bit. Richard has his own paradigm for how
software should be written and distributed. It is essentially a "no
binary without source" model.

  The major problem I've had with FSF is that some hardware vendors are
now using gcc as their standard C compiler. This is fine, but if they
use the FSF C library, and you compile and link using it, then your
executable contains FSF code and is (supposedly) covered by the GNU
diatribe. Er, copyleft. If you don't know this you can suddenly lose
control of your own software. I don't know if this has ever happened,
but would not use gcc for certain things. If it's the only compiler on a
given machine, I would avoid the machine. While FSF has the right to do
what they want, I would think that a vendor would clarify the status of
the library they ship.

  I have tried several times to talk to him about allowing distribution
of binary without source if the binary is given away with no
restrictions on redistribution (ie. not for profit), but he simply calls
this "software hoarding" and doesn't want to permit it.
-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
"The world is filled with fools. They blindly follow their so-called
'reason' in the face of the church and common sense. Any fool can see
that the world is flat!" - anon