Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!dont-send-mail-to-path-lines
From: mouse@lightning.mcrcim.mcgill.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re:  rms says...
Message-ID: <9102061051.AA05898@lightning.McRCIM.McGill.EDU>
Date: 6 Feb 91 10:51:56 GMT
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 24

>> Furthermore, if so few users will actually ask for the source,
>> making it available costs almost nothing, since the service will
>> hardly ever be used.

> I wonder if you have ever had to support, in the traditional sense, a
> source release.  I rather suspect that if you had, you wouldn't be
> saying that.

See that "if"?  Your assertion implies that it's *not* true that "so
few users will actually ask for the source".

Besides, there *is* a solution.  You don't have to support the source.
I would gladly swap conventional software support - which in my
experience has invariably been utterly worthless - for full source code
any day.  ("[C]onventional software support" does not include free
one-person programs/packages supported by that one person, like patch
or the pbmplus stuff.  In fact, as far as I can recall, my experiences
with all types of software support show a very strong correlation of
free software with good, functional, support.)

					der Mouse

			old: mcgill-vision!mouse
			new: mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu