Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!uflorida!haven!ncifcrf!fcs260c2!toms
From: toms@fcs260c2.ncifcrf.gov (Tom Schneider)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.news
Subject: Re: OpenWindows Source Facts
Keywords: rumors
Message-ID: <1949@fcs280s.ncifcrf.gov>
Date: 21 Nov 90 23:38:23 GMT
References: <3137@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> <869@visenix.UUCP>
Sender: news@ncifcrf.gov
Organization: NCI Supercomputer Facility, Frederick, MD
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In article <869@visenix.UUCP> beattie@visenix.UUCP (Brian Beattie) writes:
>In article <3137@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> naughton@wind.Eng.Sun.COM (Patrick Naughton) writes:
>>The source is free, but you must buy the documentation and media
>>directly from a Sun distributor to get it.  The $995 barely covers our

>Free is Free.
>Cheap is not Free.
>$995 may (or may not) be cheap but it is not free.
>If redistribution was free you could say
>it was free, but it aint so you can't.

>I get _real_ sick of marketing _lies_.

Hmm.  You seem to have a good point there!  Why couldn't they simply say that
it was available for such and such a fee?  "Free" seems to imply that they
would be willing set up an archive where anyone can ftp it from.  Having
defined "free" that way, perhaps the folks at Sun won't be willing to mention
the word "free" until they put it up on the net?  (The idea that something in
an archive is not free is absurd.  I personally don't pay for it, nor does my
organization.  We pay for net access, I suppose.)

  Tom Schneider
  National Cancer Institute
  Laboratory of Mathematical Biology
  Frederick, Maryland  21702-1201
  toms@ncifcrf.gov