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From: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: rms says...
Message-ID: <1991Feb3.085515.14365@Think.COM>
Date: 3 Feb 91 08:55:15 GMT
References: <100920286@hpcvlx.cv.hp.com> <1991Feb1.173358.2570@Think.COM> <1991Feb01.190625.940@convex.com>
Sender: news@Think.COM
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
Lines: 26

In article <1991Feb01.190625.940@convex.com> datri@convex.com (Anthony A. Datri) writes:
>I have to think that the FSF would be a lot different if they didn't have
>MIT to sponge off of.

They are "sponging off" lots of organizations, and I think most of us are
happy to be spongees.  The Sun workstation that they use was donated by
Thinking Machines.  We use lots of their software, and were happy to
promote the development of high quality software.  MIT provides disk space
on an unused little Vax; they have thousands of students using GNU Emacs,
and probably other FSF products -- I'd say they got the long end of the
deal (how much do most software vendors charge for an 8000-user license?).

>How are these users hindered?  The sources to MIT's X are freely and
>extremely available

I never said they were hindered.  I was responding to a post that said that
X users don't want access to source, they just want working binaries.  He
was implying that if the software worked, the users wouldn't be hindered by
lack of access to source.  I was listing uses for source that have nothing
to do with bugs; if the source to X weren't available, those users would be
hindered.
--
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar