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From: mike@cimcor.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: The Selling of GNU Emacs
Message-ID: <412@cimcor.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 10-Nov-87 22:20:39 EST
Article-I.D.: cimcor.412
Posted: Tue Nov 10 22:20:39 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 14-Nov-87 13:33:44 EST
References: <116@nexus.UUCP> <1947@briar.Philips.Com> <530@hqda-ai.UUCP>
Organization: Grenier & friends, Forest Lake, MN
Lines: 39
Summary: Austin Code Works may not be that bad

In article <530@hqda-ai.UUCP>, merlin@hqda-ai.UUCP (David S. Hayes) writes:
> 
>      Austin Code Works may be trying to make a quick buck off of
> RMS's work.  FSF may fry them.  Then again, it's easier if we take
> care of them ourselves.
> 

Perhaps, I may be the only one here to defend Austin Code Works. I really
like the company in that it provides a place I can go and buy usually
public domain code which has already been modified for Msdos (yuk) and
contains all of the binaries to make it run. Sure, they shouldn't be
selling copyrighted software and I won't try to defend that but as a 
resource to software that can be copied and distributed (especially
for just the cost of distribution as is often the case with them), I'm
all for it. 

One problem I see in providing UNIX for the common man is the lack
of having resources like this for UNIX programs. We have the net, but
Joe Blow reading his PC magazines doesn't realize the tremendous amount
of free software available for UNIX and so he never tries it...Thinks
no one else is using it. Moreover, even if he had seen the net he would
quickly realize how hard it is to make programs actually run on his
system - particularly this 80286 based machine (another yuk). I was
wondering about supplying precompiled software I've fought with to 
people such as News 2.11, uEmacs, Xlisp, Kermit, XYZmodem, Nethack ...
for the cost of distriibution - but when reading the copyright notices on
some of this software it seems that distributing for commerical gain
is usually prohibited. Is distributing for the cost of distribution
also then prohibited?  Is an advertising considered part of that cost?
How else are we to present the benifits of UNIX to the mass marketplace?

Legal or not, what made DOS popular is all of the illegally copied
software that people have - Borland sold 500,000 copies of Turbo Pascal
but there were probably 3 times that many copied. Yet under UNIX, we
have all of this great copyable software that no one ever hears about.

    -Mike
    uunet!rosevax!cimcor!mike
    {ihnp4, amdahl, rutgers}meccts!cimcor!mike