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From: dmorin@wpi.wpi.edu (Duane D Morin)
Newsgroups: alt.security,alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: Feedback on Computer Crime
Message-ID: <14462@wpi.wpi.edu>
Date: 9 Aug 90 05:13:55 GMT
References: <14443@wpi.wpi.edu> <9008081452.AA18175@stc06.CTD.ORNL.GOV>
Reply-To: dmorin@wpi.wpi.edu (Duane D Morin)
Organization: Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester ,MA
Lines: 38

In article <9008081452.AA18175@stc06.CTD.ORNL.GOV> de5@STC06.CTD.ORNL.GOV (SILL D E) writes:
>In article <14443@wpi.wpi.edu> dmorin@wpi.wpi.edu writes:
>>
>>As Levy says, the hackers of yesteryear simply don't exist today.  
>
>What about the last of the hackers, Richard Stallman?  Did you read
>the chapter about him in _Hackers_?


I understood Levy's opinion of Stallman to be that he was the last of a dying
breed, trying to fight for an ethic that was as good as gone.  I may, of course, be wrong, but that is what I got out of that section.
>
>>If you wrote a good program, you gave it to everyone because you were proud of
>>it, and if someone took your code and changed it so that it was better well,
>>then, good for them.  You were proud for them as well.  But today people don't
>>circulate software for the good of al concerned, they do it for personal gain.
>
>Stallman, and *many* GNU supporters would beg to differ.
>

You took that quote out of context.  I went on to say that people circulate
software most notably in piracy, such as trying to get the newest game to as
many of their friends as possible.  There are even bulletin board operators 
who support themselves by alowing pirated software to circulate their boards.
I fully agree that people will support the type of 'groupware' thing that
Stalman tried to create with GNU, but simply that it will never flourish like
it could when people can get the new Sierra game, which is definitively the
state of the art in adventure games, for free, or something written by a
handful of high school kids after school which simply isnt as good.  Some 
do work, granted (Minix comes to mind immediately), but I dont think that the
quality of the freeware in the world will ever match the commerical stuff. 

>-- 
>Dave Sill (de5@ornl.gov)		These are my opinions.
>Martin Marietta Energy Systems
>Workstation Support

Duane Morin