Path: utzoo!attcan!ncrcan!becker!bdb
From: bdb@becker.UUCP (Bruce Becker)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: What does free mean.
Message-ID: <6110@becker.UUCP>
Date: 16 Mar 90 18:27:17 GMT
References: <1151@mtxinu.UUCP> <1990Mar14.234322.16167@NCoast.ORG>
Reply-To: bdb@becker.UUCP (Bruce Becker)
Distribution: usa
Organization: G. T. S., Toronto, Ontario
Lines: 47

In article <1990Mar14.234322.16167@NCoast.ORG> allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery) writes:
|My main problem with the FSF philosophy, is that it devalues my time.  If I am
|not able to get money to put food on the table---or even have a table to put
|food on---I must do something for which I can earn money.  The FSF proposes,
|however, that my main saleable commodity must not be sold, and intends that
|that philosophy become *the* philosophy.  I conclude that I'd better go get a
|job as a bricklayer.  Of course, if that leaves me unable to write software
|because e.g. too tired or not enough time in the day, etc., too bad.

	There is nothing which prevents you from
	selling software which contains FSF-licenced
	code.

	What you are prohibited from doing is
	to conceal the source code from the customer.

	Now this certainly has some economic
	implications, but they are for the most
	part not the same problems as the ones
	you fear mistakenly.

|Or I can work to stop the FSF's position from being accepted in general; which
|will no doubt get me into a lot of trouble with people who prefer not to think
|about the sudden increase in the rolls of the unemployed if the FSF gets its
|way.  (*They*, of course, need not worry about it; *they* get grants.  Faugh.)

	You can't be taken all that seriously when
	you make such useless (and inaccurate)
	generalizations.

|Not to mention the fact that I can find quite a few more things to do with my
|time than recreational programming.  If I'm even remotely like other program-
|mers, there's liable to be a sharp drop in the number of new programs.

	There are quite a few more things to do with
	your time than recreational poking at software
	idealists.

	Give it a rest, Brandon - you're shooting
	from the hip on this one and not hitting
	anything...

-- 
  (__)	 Bruce Becker	Toronto, Ontario
w \@@/	 Internet: bdb@becker.UUCP, bruce@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu
 `/v/-e	 UUCP: ...!uunet!mnetor!becker!bdb
_/  \_	 "So far from God, so close to the United States" - Old Mexican proverb