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From: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: rms says...
Message-ID: <1991Feb1.034801.24207@Think.COM>
Date: 1 Feb 91 03:48:01 GMT
References: <4607@lib.tmc.edu> <1682@digi.lonestar.org> <43377@nigel.ee.udel.edu>
Sender: news@Think.COM
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
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In article <43377@nigel.ee.udel.edu> new@ee.udel.edu (Darren New) writes:
>I *do* object to software like ghostscript and GNU Smalltalk. Adobe
>spent mucho bucks coming up with a language that is flexible and fairly
>easy to implement efficiently. XEROX PARC spent literally decades
>working Smalltalk into a useful and easy to use package.  FSF takes
>their entire design, recodes it, and then sells it as their own.  I
>think this is wrong.

Postscript and Smalltalk are programming languages.  Ghostscript and GNU
Smalltalk are just implementations of the languages.  A language
specification is not the same thing as an implementation design.  Do you
have evidence that anyone actually stole Adobe's design when developing
Ghostscript, as opposed to designing the implementation by themselves based
only on the published spec?  If not, I suggest you hesitate before making
such accusations.

As for Smalltalk, from the very beginning Xerox has been *promoting*
independent implementations.  They have published books containing papers
by third parties, explaining various implementation strategies, for the
express purpose of allowing others to make use of these ideas and build
upon them.

--
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
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