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Path: utzoo!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: The quality of public domain software and other points
Message-ID: <259@looking.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 2-Apr-85 00:00:00 EST
Article-I.D.: looking.259
Posted: Tue Apr  2 00:00:00 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 3-Apr-85 01:02:35 EST
References: <1620@watcgl.UUCP>
Organization: Looking Glass Software, Waterloo, Ont
Lines: 36

Thanks to all those who sent me the names of their favourite PD programs.
I was aware of most of them.  The fact remains that quality PD software
is the exception, and not the rule.  You should all keep this in mind.
Living on the net creates an artificial impression of what the world is
like.  There's lots of people sitting around with free time, working for
places like Universities who's charter is to put things in the public
domain.   The real world is different.   Most of the PD stuff is garbage.
The rest are labours of love which are eventually left for other things.


At least when it comes to intellectual property, he is.  Read even the
GNU manifesto.  Can you claim that his views are not extreme?  In this
I claim the word fanatic.  I suppose that is a slightly insulting term,
so I may be slightly guilty, but I still think it is fairly descriptive.
As for communism, RMS believes that all programs should come from those
with ability (without material reward for that ability) and be given to
those with need.  That is the communist creed, more or less.  I did not
use this term as an insult, but rather as a compact way of describing his
creed as it pertains to software.  He might very well agree with it if
you ask him - I don't know.  It is up to you to decide what you feel
of the philosphy.  Just like you can call me a capitalist or free-enterpriser.
The term is descriptive, and you may make value judgements later based on
your opinion of the philosphy of free enterprise.

Anyway, observation shows that maintaining software is boring and not usually
a desired job.  The best people would rather do their own stuff.  Thus
RMS's supposition that companies will spring up that charge for GNU support
is shaky.  In the high-demand market that programming is, would you do this
if you could do something of your own instead?  Certainly people will do
things like this, but they will never be first raters.  The first raters
will be off doing something else.

All luck to RMS and crew if they can produce a quality program that is
consistent and remains so.  All luck to us if they only half-succeed.
-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473