Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!decwrl!mcnc!uvaarpa!murdoch!astsun7.astro.Virginia.EDU!gl8f From: gl8f@astsun7.astro.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl) Newsgroups: comp.sources.d Subject: Re: Rms says: Motif vs open look, a trend? Message-ID: <1991Feb9.223844.205@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> Date: 9 Feb 91 22:38:44 GMT References: <8536@mitech.com> <1991Feb9.000821.5554@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> Sender: usenet@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU Organization: Department of Astronomy, University of Virginia Lines: 25 In article lear@turbo.bio.net (Eliot) writes: >gl8f@astsun7.astro.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl) writes: > >>But the X-Windows system style copyright isn't ideal for everyone -- >>what about the poor sod who buys a Wizz-Bang X Box that includes X and >>no source? He finds a bug, someone on the net provides a source-code >>fix, and then he has to wait 6 months for the vendor to ship him a >>fixed binary. > >And then he has to call up MIT and buy a tape, or he has to FTP the >sources, or he has to uucp them. There are numerous ways to get X >source in small periods of time. Which doesn't do the user much good since the vendor has made changes to get X to run on the vendor's box. With the Gnu License, I get access to all the source so I can fix it in 5 minutes. Without it, I may or may not get stuck for 6 months, depending on the vendor's support policy. Clearly "no commercial use allowed" is a bad license. But I disagree that it's *obvious* that the X license is better than the Gnu License, which is what the original poster was claiming. There are always tradeoffs -- vendors may not spend as much money doing machine-independent optimizations to X if they had to give them away. But I may or may not prefer that. And that's what I was saying.