Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version nyu B notes v1.5 12/10/84; site acf4.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!harpo!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!cmcl2!acf4!tsc2597
From: tsc2597@acf4.UUCP (Sam Chin)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re: The GNU Manifesto - let the people decide
Message-ID: <1040010@acf4.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 31-Mar-85 21:10:00 EST
Article-I.D.: acf4.1040010
Posted: Sun Mar 31 21:10:00 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 3-Apr-85 02:05:56 EST
References: <258@looking.UUCP>
Organization: New York University
Lines: 26

<>

"What I don't like is inferior products that displace superior products
becuase they were written by fanatical communists like RMS."

Hey come on, this statement almost degrades to the level of DOCTOR VAX who
has been writing libelious mail to net.apple. I have been using GNU emacs
for a few days now and it is great. RMS and company are certainly good
programmers and I certainly have faith in them producing a decent GNU. GNU
emacs is at least as powerful as commercial versions of emacs which sell for
thousands of dollars. We are not looking at dinky $50 dollar utilities (I
know, I wrote some during weekends when I was bored and sell them too) but
at a major programming effort whose distribution source is about 3
megabytes. Besides, with all the big guys around, and the incredible number
of existing software companies, most of the small guys are doomed anyway
unless they have something *really really* innovative - just ask wall street
or any venture capitalist. Perhaps we shall see a reemergence of free
software after the big software shakeout. Personally, if I wrote another
package which was between "useful" and "good", I would probably give it away
free or freeware. If I wrote something "truly wonderful", then I would weigh 
trying to sell it commercially but even then with todays competition, I
would have about a 10% chance of survival.

                                               Sam Chin
                                               allegra!cmcl2!acf4!tsc2597
                                               tsc2597.acf4@nyu