Xref: utzoo comp.lang.perl:1843 comp.sys.apollo:5835 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!uflorida!novavax!weiner From: weiner@novavax.UUCP (Bob &) Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl,comp.sys.apollo Subject: Re: Why perl can't ship as HP/Apollo base software Message-ID: Date: 17 Jul 90 06:30:01 GMT References: <4b8c2cb1.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM> Sender: weiner@novavax.UUCP Organization: Motorola Inc. Lines: 57 In-reply-to: carlton@apollo.HP.COM's message of 12 Jul 90 14:55:00 GMT In article <4b8c2cb1.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM> carlton@apollo.HP.COM (Carlton B. Hommel) writes: 1. The GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Our legal department has explicitly told R&D that they are not allowed to do anything with any program that got anywhere near this document. While I don't want to start a flame war about GNU, our lawyers feel it is too full of holes, and is just a court challenge waiting to happen....Heck, we aren't even allowed to use GNU utilities (gcc, bison, ...) to produce binaries for product shipment. I would really appreciate it if someone would elaborate on this. The Apollo OS would be so much more usable if they included GNU Emacs with it, but as this statement makes clear, Apollo's lawyers are leaning on the conservative side. Notice that the conservative side need not be the customer's side and hence one may question such a company's commitment to providing its customers the best available tools. The GNU license clearly states that aggregation of other programs with theirs does not bring the other programs under the license agreement. The only thing it is trying to protect is GNU software itself, not any other software that is produced using GNU tools (then no one would be able to use GNU Emacs). Until a lawyer or a bright person can provide a convincing argument otherwise, this sounds like nothing more than a cop out. 2. No Support When a computer company ships out software, they will end up taking bug reports on it. No matter if you have UNSUPPORTED SOFTWARE all over the man pages, no matter if it is shipped in /usr/nosupport/bin, you will get phone calls, bug reports, and complaints about it. Saying a utility is unsupported does not work. This must be why Apollo's documentation doesn't even let people know there is a very useful directory called /domain_examples. If a free, unsupported tool is better than your proprietary tool, then you should take it under your wing and ship it with your own fixes and your own support. That way, your R&D people and your customers get the best tools and still only have to support one of each type. If Apollo has the resources to support Aegis, BSD, and SysV and all the many revs of each (which it probably doesn't, hence the small number of our support questions that ever get answered adequately), then it should be able to pick up some of the most useful freeware and support that too. It's just the not invented here or non proprietary enough syndrome once again. I say this as a daily Apollo user, if you can believe that. I hope letters like this are being copies or e-mailed to HP/Apollo vice-presidents so they can here what technical customers want. -- Bob Weiner Usenet: ...!gatech!uflorida!novavax!weiner Internet: weiner%novavax@bikini.cis.ufl.edu