Newsgroups: comp.misc
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watdragon!rose!ccplumb
From: ccplumb@rose.uwaterloo.ca (Colin Plumb)
Subject: Re: rms says...
Message-ID: <1991Jan29.201935.840@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Sender: daemon@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Owner of Many System Processes)
Organization: University of Waterloo
References: <21327@yunexus.YorkU.CA> <4607@lib.tmc.edu>
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 91 20:19:35 GMT
Lines: 66

jmaynard@thesis1.hsch.utexas.edu (Jay Maynard) wrote:
> Stallman's comments make it plain that he's not really interested in
> maximizing the reuse of software, as the GNU General Public Virus claims;
> rather, he's using it as a political weapon to further his utopia.

Sigh.  Was there ever reason to believe he wanted anything else?  Everyone
wants the world to be more like their ideal world.  Is this surprising?

> Hence,
> his software, far from being truly free, will continue carrying the cost of
> buying in to his utopian ideal of stamping out software ownership entirely.
> I find it particularly ironic that he's using the FSF's ownership of its
> software to further his goals.

I agree that's his expressed ambition, and it's something I have reservations
about myself (mostly a fear of the unknown), but you certainly don't have
to buy in to anything.  All you have to do is propagate the conditions
(you get full source, this propagation constraint, and no other constraints)
you got it under.  It's designed to further RMS's declared milestone of
a full software environment with source that people can give to others.
But you don't have to like it (I don't like having to licence BSD 4.3 from
AT&T!), or take any action which furthers his goals (no local hacks -> no
increased value for Gnuware).

>This still means that I cannot afford to have any GPV-protected code on my
>computer, since I cannot risk having the source of some of my income tainted
>by association with GPV code; whether or not it's infected by the GPV, I
>can't afford the legal representation I'd need to defend my rights in my
>programming. This is a real shame, as there are good tools that are not
>acceptable only because of the licensing, and it's far more likely that I'll
>be able to reimplement them more easily than I could convince their authors
>(even those not directly associated with the FSF, such as Larry Wall) to
>license their code under non-utopian terms.

Why?  If it becomes "tainted", you can untaint it, as long as you haven't
distributed it, and the legal risks are much less, due to the FSF's funding
restrictions, than having commercial source around.  What would AT&T do
if some of its source got into your product?

What can't you do with the tools that you'd like to, except for the licencing.
Integrating them into software which you hold the copyright to doesn't advance
RMS's goal of building more software with distributable source, so you can
expect he won't like it.  But it's also contrary to other companies' objectives
of keeping their trade secrets or extorting gobs of money, so it's not as
if the restriction is unusual.

>Oh well. So much for gcc, bash, perl, smail 3,...

Really, I can't see the fuss.  If you just want to *use* them, you don't need
to keep source on-line at all if you're paranoid.  I've heard Lotus (which
RMS has picketed a few times) uses gcc, I've had people at Microsoft tell
me they'd use it for product development if it could generate workable
8086 code (MS uses an interpreted Pcode for non-core parts of their apps
for space reasons; the C compiler to this is a notorious hack and replacing
it with GCC has been seriously considered).  The company I worked for a
few years ago, when bringing up their Unix-like platform ported Gnu tools
like crazy as the best way to satisfy customer demand for the functionality.
NeXT based their objective-C compiler on GCC.  They got what they wanted,
source is available if you want it (although most are waiting for GCC 2
with everything merged more comfortably), and everyone's happy.

Oh, well, it's well known that there will always be *some* people who
are unhappy.  All the revolutions in the planet's history ever seem
to accomplish was to move that set around.
-- 
	-Colin