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From: mouse@lightning.mcrcim.mcgill.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: rms says...
Message-ID: <9102060753.AA05350@lightning.McRCIM.McGill.EDU>
Date: 6 Feb 91 07:53:10 GMT
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 33

[>> is Richard Stallman, > is Benjamin Ellsworth]
>>  The example of X Windows shows what would happen without the
["X Windows", forsooth.  If he means the X Window System he should call
it that, or use its short name: X.]
>>  copyleft.  Most users who get X Windows get just a binary.  They
>>  can't get the source for the version they are running. ...

> To me, this is just further proof of Mr. Stallman's distance from
> reality on this issue.  The vast (and I mean VAST) majority of users
> don't want the source to X windows.  They want it to run to the spec
> and run fast.

But the number of *sites* that want source is proportionately much
higher.  Here, for example, perhaps five of our user community have any
direct use for the source to X.  However, those five are the ones
responsible for supporting X for all our users (some 125 to 150 of
them)!  So while most of the users probably wouldn't be competent to
unpack the source, much less do anything useful with it, source
availability has a direct impact on X's utility for most/all of them.

As for wanting it to run to the spec, I doubt most users really care
about that.  Most probably wouldn't even be able to tell, and would
even claim brokenness for ones which actually do conform.  (To pick my
favorite example, consider a server which draws zero-width lines as
circles with the ideal lines as diameters, or perhaps
coordinate-axis-aligned rectangles with the ideal lines as diagonals.
Either one would, I believe, be perfectly legal, but most users, myself
included, would unhesitatingly point and say "broken".)

					der Mouse

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