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From: richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript,gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Ghostscript: The bad news
Message-ID: <1990Dec16.104300.12930@pegasus.com>
Date: 16 Dec 90 10:43:00 GMT
Reply-To: richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk)
Organization: Pegasus,  Honolulu
Lines: 67

Lots of us have been waiting around for a very long time for Ghostscript
to materialize.  Some of us have tried to contribute to speed things along,
in the best traditions of "free software".

Well after a recent exchange with Peter Deutsch, the prime (if not only)
author, it's becoming more clear to me that we're all wasting our time.

I sent mail to Peter expressing my concerns that he didn't seem to be
allowing others to contribute and thus speed things along.  In part
I said:

	... you give the impression that you don't necessarily want our
	help.  The feeling is one of : "give me some hints here and
	there, but the code is mine."

In reply to this Peter said the following:

	The copyright that comes with Ghostscript is quite serious:
	Ghostscript is, in my view, a piece of potentially commercial
	software that I have developed, that I own, and that I choose
	to distibute as GNUware.

Frankly, for me that took a few days to fully sink in.  Peter has
written Ghostscript and will allow us to use it and debug it for him.
He reserves the right to turn it into a commercial product once we've
helped him get it to that point.

Then what do we have?  A package of what used to be GNUware that we
are no longer allowed to modify or perhaps even use?

I understand that anything distributed under a copyright like the GNU
software can potentially be taken away.  But when it says `Copyright by
Richard Stallman' I find little reason to worry.  When Peter Deutsch
says he's serious about going commercial in the future, then I have to
believe his Ghostscript is a waste of our time.

I'm sure Peter is a nice enough guy.  But I personally feel betrayed,
both by him and by GNU for leading me to believe that Ghostscript was
going to be another great piece of "free" software in the traditions of
emacs, gcc, and friends.

Before Ghostscript came along I was getting involved with xps, but dropped
it because GNU had a pretty good reputation with me.  That was apparently
a mistake, one that has cost me about a year delay in getting to a usable
postscript interpreter.  If the misplaced attention that Ghostscript has
garnered had been spent on xps instead, we'd be done by now -- whereas
Ghostscript has a long way to go yet.

And why is that?  People have apparently been sending Peter fixes and
sizeable enhancements to help the project along.  But Peter is only one
person, and since he wants to maintain his ownership of Ghostscript he
can't accept the work of others as freely as freeware projects normally
do.  Perhaps his willingness to steal from the net to build his product
has some bounds.

Personally, I'm going to go see what xps has been up to.  If Peter or
Richard Stallman clarify this mess in a reasonable fashion, and invite
others to pound on the code, then I'll consider continuing on with
Ghostscript -- otherwize it's taking up a lot of disk space here that I
can use for something else.

My regard for the GNU project has been greatly diminished.  I sincerely
hope someone will restore some order to the world.


-- 
Richard Foulk		richard@pegasus.com