From: utzoo!decvax!decwrl!sun!megatest!fortune!hpda!hplabs!sri-unix!dagobah!mis@Berkeley
Newsgroups: net.emacs
Title: Software Sabotage
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.1039
Posted: Thu Apr 21 17:16:08 1983
Received: Sat Apr 30 00:19:06 1983

RMS is obviously not on the same planet I'm on either.

Unfortunately, I don't have the self-restraint to ignore his
adolescent flamings about the way the world ought to be, not
to mention his ad hominem attacks on Gosling and his Emacs.

It seems to me reasonable that Gosling do whatever he wants
with his Emacs.  He's spent YEARS developing what is almost
product quality code, distributing it generously and widely,
documenting it and answering questions about it, and
nobody can insist he do it in perpetuity.

And someone dedicated needs to do it, or it will become 
old and ugly (as will we all, someday).

My understanding is that nobody has put restrictions on what
James could do with their improvements.  It seems a fair trade
to me that they could have an Emacs for their use without cost.

The UniPress people (whom I know to be honest and businesslike)
propose to invest time and money into doing the other 5% that takes
so much effort (keeping up with Berkeley for example) AND 
maintenance AND support on a number of Unix machines, including
some new ones.

Why shouldn't they realize a return on their investment?
And why shouldn't James get something back for all his time?

Does RMS really think someone should do MAINTENANCE and not be
paid?

(By the way, UniPress is not Microsoft or IBM -- it's Fred Pack and
Mark Krieger who are using their own money.  It's very easy for
someone with an ARPA sinecure to criticize...)

The prices don't seem outrageous to me for a multiuser system.
It would be nice if they had lower rates for educational and
multiuser situations. $1000 is kind of high for a single-user
system, but I imagine they'll price it appropriately for the 
smaller machines, and in response to competition.

The next time I'd like to hear from RMS is when NIL and "true" Emacs
are as usable for doing real software development as Gosling's 
"semi-ersatz" one is now is.

At that point he might have some credibility (though from my 
limited exposure to him it seems unlikely -- I remember a
dim sum last year when he accused someone of being "sleazy" simply 
because he worked at IBM Yorktown).


Mark Seiden