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From: bothner@sevenlayer.cs.wisc.edu (Per Bothner)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript,gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: Ghostscript: The bad news
Message-ID: <1990Dec18.064308.18526@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
Date: 18 Dec 90 06:43:08 GMT
References: <1990Dec16.104300.12930@pegasus.com> <1990Dec17.145953.15161@rodan.acs.syr.edu>
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(I'm posting to quash mis-informed rumor-mongerering, though
I cannot answer officially for FSF or Peter Deutsch. However, I've been
close to both for a long time, so I have a pretty good idea of what's
going on.)

In article <1990Dec17.145953.15161@rodan.acs.syr.edu> amichiel@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Allen J Michielsen) writes:
>   I must have a real misunderstanding here,

Yes.

>and this isn't exactly the place for it

gnu.misc.discuss is a good place for it; comp.lang.postscript
probabaly isn't (which is why I've directed followups to the former).

>but it was my (clear) understanding that the GNU foundation, etc, was
>clearly on the complete side of complete PD (only) work.

FSF software is *not* public domain (though it only makes a difference
if you plan on re-distributing it (or software based on it),
in which case the GPL places some restrictions).

>Some of this [money raised from various sources] is available to people like
>Peter in order to (partially) compensate them for their efforts.

I don't believe FSF doles out money to other than employees
(and, btw, Stallman is technically a volunteer).
And Peter Deutsch is not employed by FSF, but has worked on
Ghostscript on his own time, without compensation (except a few
"thanks you"s). Thus misinformed carping is quite out of place.

>As the mac 'matured' these packages were spun out of the free system software
>1 at a time, and eventually shuffled out & sold to another company for further
>development & sale.  SUN is doing the same thing now.  Earlier system versions
>included fortran, pascal, & C as FREE languages, and other software like
>sunDraw, sunPaint, sunWrite, were freeware

These things were never free, by any reasonable use of the term.
They were *bundelled*, i.e. included in the price of the OS
(which was usually included in the price of the hardware).
This is "free" only in the sense of "buy one, get a second one free"
- that is, not free at all.
-- 
	--Per Bothner
bothner@cs.wisc.edu Computer Sciences Dept, U. of Wisconsin-Madison