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From: rcj@moss.ATT.COM
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: The GNU Manifesto
Message-ID: <19303@clyde.ATT.COM>
Date: 30 Dec 87 01:43:29 GMT
References: <153@mozart.UUCP>
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Reply-To: rcj@moss.UUCP (Curtis Jackson)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Whippany NJ
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[Quoted material from The GNU Manifesto, (C) 1985 Richard M. Stallman - rcj]

If someone would pass this on to Richard Stallman I'd appreciate it because
I'd be interested in his responses -- hopefully he's reading this now.

}Complete system sources will be available to everyone.  As a result, a user
}who needs changes in the system will always be free to make them himself,
}or hire any available programmer or company to make them for him.  Users
}will no longer be at the mercy of one programmer or company which owns the
}sources and is in sole position to make changes.

They'll still be at the mercy of that one programmer who made the changes
in the system, because literally hundreds of incompatible versions of GNU
are almost guaranteed by this system, and that means that the dream of
freely sharing software goes down the tubes because the software worth
sharing won't run on even a majority of the several hundreds of different
home-brewed GNU variants around.  You're shooting yourself in the foot.

}Schools will be able to provide a much more educational environment by
}encouraging all students to study and improve the system code.  Harvard's

You ever seen what happens to a system when you turn even very talented
students loose on the system code?  I have.  I worked for 12 hours one
day trying to figure out why my compiler didn't work anymore, and I
finally had the C compiler compile a program consisting of setting an
integer variable to 5 and immediately printing it -- and I got a large
negative floating-point number!  Turns out our most talented student had
been tinkering with the C compiler source code.  Once again, pull out that
pistol and aim at your foot.

}them.  Consider a space station where air must be manufactured at great
}cost: charging each breather per liter of air may be fair, but wearing the
}metered gas mask all day and all night is intolerable even if everyone can
}afford to pay the air bill.  And the TV cameras everywhere to see if you
}ever take the mask off are outrageous.  It's better to support the air
}plant with a head tax and chuck the masks.

So you just want to give everyone a toolkit and unlock the door to the
inner workings of the air plant and let everyone tinker with it, right?
Or so you said previously...

}If people would rather pay for GNU plus service than get GNU free without
}service, a company to provide just service to people who have obtained GNU
}free ought to be profitable.

Some of us people would rather pay for an operating system NOT developed
by the classic hacker.  Hackers write "nifty" code but they don't write
maintainable code and they certainly don't document worth crap.  You ever
try to maintain/change code written by a hacker?  *shudder*
I don't mind doing my own support, but I'd have to see one hell of a big
improvement in GNU before I would actually choose to let that be the software
I *have* to support.

}If anything deserves a reward, it is social contribution.  Creativity can

And yet you are already saying that the programmers who work on GNU will
not be rewarded monetarily for choosing a role of social contribution.
So whether they deserve it or not, they won't get financial rewards.
That Warm Fuzzy Feeling [tm] doesn't go very far with the landlord and
the creditors.  Why are all programmers, who seek to exercise an intellectual
power that they find delicious to use, suddenly forced into a role of Mother
Theresa-style martyrdom?

}the means customary in the field of software today are based on
}destruction.

If you have a good product and good marketing (or, I'll admit, in *some*
cases just good marketing), you will be successful.  If you don't have a
good product you won't be successful.  Therefore, if your idea is good
enough you can find money to buy today's software and much much much more
than recoup that investment with the sales from your good product that was
developed using today's software.  If your idea is crappy you won't get
backing, you won't be able to afford today's software, and you won't get
to implement a crappy product and try to foist it on the marketplace.
This is the free market that was so injuriously defended earlier in the
Manifesto (it was not quoted here, sorry).  A little double standard, perhaps?

}Restricting copying is not the only basis for business in software.  It is
}the most common basis because it brings in the most money.  If it were
}prohibited, or rejected by the customer, software business would move to
}other bases of organization which are now used less often.  There are
}always numerous ways to organize any kind of business.

Restricting copying is not rejected by the customer for one simple reason:
not just any Larry, Moe, or Curly from the street can write software.  It
is still very much a black art, sad to say.  The customer always wants
to do more and more for himself, and the software market *is* responding
to that want.  Expert systems, self-configuring software, easily reconfigured
and well-optioned software are all on the rise -- customers are able to do
more and more on their own due to quality products.  Eventually there
will come a day when the tools for software generation have reached such
a refined state that the people who needed serious hand-holding ten years
before will be able to generate their own software with relative ease.
And thus THE FREE MARKET will have balanced itself out for the good of
society -- ALL ON ITS OWN.

}now.  But that is not an argument against the change.  It is not considered
}an injustice that sales clerks make the salaries that they now do.  If
}programmers made the same, that would not be an injustice either.  (In

With the tools available today, it *would* be an injustice because I can't
take the average 18-year-old off the street and teach him/her to program
efficiently, whereas I can use him/her as a sales clerk.  That is why
programmers get paid more.  But, oops!, that's that old FREE MARKET
cropping up again; supply and demand and all that.

}"Control over the use of one's ideas" really constitutes control over other
}people's lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult.

"If I wasn't here to have this nifty idea, your lives would be garbage, but
since I am here and do have this idea, you have the choice of paying me a
sum to make your life better.  You have something you didn't have before --
the choice."  Hmmmm, doesn't sound to me like I'm making their lives more
difficult...

}For example, the patent system was established to encourage inventors to
}disclose the details of their inventions.  Its purpose was to help society
}rather than to help inventors.  At the time, the life span of 17 years for

Um, ever considered the possibility that the government was looking out
for the government a bit here, and that the government wanted to get a look
at all new inventions to see what the government could do with them?
Before you write this off as paranoia take a look at the military-industrial
complex today...

}The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors
}frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction.  This

And thus many a fallacy, rather than being re-investigated individually,
was instead blindly propogated, and that is one thing that is given credit
for the unreliability of ancient historical accounts.

}The case of programs today is very different from that of books a hundred
}years ago.  The fact that the easiest way to copy a program is from one
}neighbor to another, the fact that a program has both source code and
}object code which are distinct, and the fact that a program is used rather
}than read and enjoyed, combine to create a situation in which a person who

a) I can pick up the phone, give a credit card number, and receive almost
any software I could possibly desire.

b) Your statement that a program is used rather than read and enjoyed makes
the assumptions that all programs are utility programs and that all books
are for enjoyment only -- both of which are ludicrous.  Paul Prudhomme,
a chef who I admire greatly, spent years and years learning his art.  He
then spent thousands of dollars on a test kitchen and hundreds of hours in
that kitchen making delicious, well-documented recipes that could be duplicated
in the average home kitchen.  The PROFITS from his cookbook allowed him to
buy a tasso (special ham) and sausage processing plant, along with other
investments, that gave him the financial wherewithall to comfortably go
back into the test kitchen and produce another cookbook.  This one was
specifically designed to document and save cooking and food preparation
practices in southern Louisianna that were fast dwindling and which he
feared would be forgotten if not committed to paper.  A very nice social
contribution, and one that would have been extremely difficult if not
impossible had he not been able to copyright and sell his first cookbook
in the free market (damn, there it is again!)

}Programming has an irresistible fascination for some people, usually the
}people who are best at it.  There is no shortage of professional musicians

I think we need a definition of "programming" here.  The people I've seen
who will program for no money tend to "design and code"; they don't
do what I consider "programming", which includes rendering both the design
and code in a form that is maintainable and understandable by/to others.
They remind me of professional musicians who are wonderful to listen to
but who never write down any of their songs or lyrics.  You can listen
to them and their recordings, but it is impossible to upgrade or improve
their work because of the form in which it exists (or doesn't, as the
case may be).

}come to expect and demand it.  Low-paying organizations do poorly in
}competition with high-paying ones, but they do not have to do badly if the
}high-paying ones are banned.

Now *there's* a free market for you!  Yeah!  :-(

[Speaking of a Software Tax:]
} * users who care which projects their share is spent on
}  can choose this for themselves.

I do this now.  I look around the marketplace, find the company with the
best product, and reward them with my business.  This hopefully encourages
them to make more good products -- money is a good motivator.

OK, the bottom line(s):

a) I haven't seen GNU source in at least a year, and it may be that my
objections are outdated.  Anyone who would like to show me some, please
feel free to send it (I will, of course, honor the free re-distribution
clause if anyone asks for it).

b) I think that GNU itself is an interesting idea, but any such software
system had better be very good to start with, very well-documented, very
maintainable, and very understandable.  The idea that "well what do you
want for nothing?!" just won't cut it for systems software.

c) Believe it or not, I believe in my conception of shareware (binaries)
and will gladly pay to register if the product is good, the support is
good, and the provider(s) are responsive to requests.  I believe in my
conception of freeware (source), and will gladly send a donation to the
provider(s) provided the product is good *and* maintainable *and* I can
adapt it to my needs without having to rewrite half of it.

I don't agree with the "give GNU to everybody and everybody who wants to
will modify it and we'll live happily ever after" philosophy.  That is
why I *do* support shareware -- to keep a product portable and reliable
and interfaceable to other software there needs to be some sort of
centralized control.  That is why, when I decide which word processor
to use with my new PC and have used it long enough to know that I have
made the correct choice, I will send the provider the registration fee
and probably more.  Because that way I will help to ensure a responsive
supporter for the product I use, rather than trying Joe's version of the
free source only to find out the hard way that it screws up my disk in
some instances, and then trying Sally's version and find out that the way
she was able to optimize it so well was by removing several features I
like and need, and then trying Elvis' version only to discover that it
crashes my machine because of the hook he put in to support his weird
clone, and then trying...

The MAD Programmer -- 201-386-6409 (Cornet 232)
alias: Curtis Jackson	...![ ihnp4 ulysses cbosgd allegra ]!moss!rcj
			...![ ihnp4 cbosgd akgua watmath  ]!clyde!rcj