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From: gudeman@arizona.edu (David Gudeman)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: The Selling of GNU Emacs
Message-ID: <2856@megaron.arizona.edu>
Date: Mon, 16-Nov-87 16:01:55 EST
Article-I.D.: megaron.2856
Posted: Mon Nov 16 16:01:55 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 18-Nov-87 05:32:07 EST
Organization: U of Arizona CS Dept, Tucson
Lines: 46
In-reply-to: wesommer@athena.mit.edu's message of 15 Nov 87 21:39:56 GMT


In article <1808@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> wesommer@athena.mit.edu (William Sommerfeld) writes:

   In article <2833@megaron.arizona.edu> gudeman@arizona.edu (David Gudeman) writes:
   >Stallman has said many times
   >that the "free" in his free software does _not_ refer to money, it
   >refers to free distribution.  

   I'm not sure what you're paraphrasing here.  Reread the copying
   policies on GNU emacs more carefully.

Well, I probably shouldn't have paraphrased Stallman without having a
copy around to back me up.

   >Good grief, Stallman and the FSF sell GNU software.

   Wrong.  They sell _tapes_ which contain GNU software; they are
   charging for the cost of the tape, plus the labor and wear&tear on the
   hardware involved in copying....

Sophistry.  (That's the gentleman's word for "bullshit". :-) You can
argue that they are only charging for a service, but they won't send
you any software free.  If you can get it free from someone else, you
are not prevented from doing so, but that doesn't mean they aren't
selling their copy.  In any case, this article was a response to an
article bashing a software company for "selling" GNU Emacs.  The
company could use the same sophistry and be as philosophically pure as
the FSF (Assuming the FSF _does_ resort to that argument, I don't
believe they do.)

   ...The basis of Stallman's argument (which I don't happen to agree
   with) is that you can't charge money for information, because you
   can give a copy of it to someone without losing it yourself.

I probably shouldn't argue this, because it is unresolvable without
intervention from Stallman (and even then the loser could claim
Stallman's earlier statements were unclear) but I believe you are
misreading him.  Stallman (according to Gudeman) only says that it is
wrong to use a copyright to prevent others from distributing and using
software when such distribution or use doesn't cost the copyright
holder anything.

   Disclaimer: I don't believe in the "GNU manifesto" and the software
   socialism of his proposed "software tax", but I have yet to see
   anything but good come out of the GNU project.

Disclaimer: Ditto disclaimer above.  I'm a confirmed capitalist.