Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!uflorida!gatech!bbn!gateway!RELAY-NSWC.NAVY.MIL!dsill
From: dsill@RELAY-NSWC.NAVY.MIL (Dave Sill)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: Advertising on comp.emacs
Message-ID: <33521@bbn.COM>
Date: 14 Dec 88 15:54:16 GMT
Sender: news@bbn.COM
Organization: Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren, VA
Lines: 135

Well, this is starting to get nasty.  Odd number of ">"s is Rick
Farris, even number is me.

>>Yeah, right, like Microsoft has really done computing a great service
>>by selling us MS-DOS.
>
>Of course they have.  We Unix bigots know all of the faults of
>MS-DOS, and prefer to use real operating systems like Unix, but the
>vast majority of the unwashed masses need only a "control" program to
>load their applications software.  MS-DOS works just fine (and
>provides a great service) for those folks.

All I can say is that you must not have to work with MS-DOS yourself,
either as a user, developer, or integrator.  No informed person in one
of those categories could possibly consider DOS anything but a royal
pain in the ass.

Users have to suffer DOS's asinine limitations, including, but not
limited to, 8-character monocase filenames with forced extensions,
640k usable RAM with additional confusion about expansion and
extension memory, incompatible TSRs, braindead command line interface,
total lack of application interface consistency, et cetera.

Developers have all the same problems as users, but have to deal also
with the idiosyncrasies of the Intel chips, particularly the 64k
segment limit.

Integrators, those who have to support users on various systems
connected over various networks, constantly find that DOS-based
systems are the least-common-denominator, and limit the capabilities
of the environment as a whole.

So why do the masses "support" DOS?  The don't know any better.  They
say "Hey, N million people can't be wrong.  DOS must be good."  I can
hear the bubbles bursting even as I write.  User's are becoming aware
of environments better than DOS, such as the Macintosh, (perhaps)
OS/2, and UNIX.

>> There's no connection between commercial success and benefit to the
>> community.
>
>You must be joking.  There are certainly exceptions, but generally
>speaking, there is a very direct connection between commercial
>success and benefit to the community.  It's called "voting with your
>dollars."

The problem with elections is that the voters are rarely well-enough
informed to make the right decision.

>> And then there's the question of motive.  Is Lotus a collection of
>> Good Samaritans trying to make users more productive or are they a
>> bunch of money grubbing MBAs trying to line their pockets?
>
>This is the first time the question of motive has come up.  It's your
>strawman, answer your own questions.  Don't try to attribute your
>favorite crusades to me.

That was a rhetorical question, Rick, and I wasn't trying to attribute
it to you.

>>Ah, but there's all the difference in the world.  You're not just
>>paying programmers when you buy commercial software, you're giving
>>them profits.  Where do those profits go?  Use your imagination.
>
>Hey, I'm getting tired of this shit!  All I said was that there is no
>difference in paying the programmers.  I'm not here to act as a
>convenient excuse for you to vent your spleen about motives, profits,
>etc.

Lighten up!  I'm merely disagreeing with you.  If you can't stand the
heat... 

>>>I don't really care, as long as I get a good product at a fair price,
>>>with good support.
>
>> As for support, I find the Internet community is usually more
>> knowledgeable and quicker to respond with the correct answer than
>> most customer support "hotlines" staffed by twits that know less
>> about the product that I do.
>
>There you go again.  I specifically said "good support", not
>"'hotlines' staffed by twits."

I was simply stressing that good support is not the norm.  Admittedly,
this was tangential at best, but no worse than irrelevant.

>You guys could make a lot more friends (and converts) if you didn't
>take every opportunity you can find to abuse those that have even
>minor philosophical differences with you.

What "guys"?  What handy compartment have I just been stuffed into?
My friends admire me for my honesty and candor, not because I agree
with everything they say.  I don't try consiously to convert people to
my way of thinking, just to present the rationale for my beliefs.  If
they agree, that's fine.  If not, they usually present their argument.
Sometimes they end up taking my side; other times I end up on their
side; usually, though, neither of us changes sides immediately.  But
we both come out of it with a better understanding of each other and
the issues involved.

>In my original post, I only made two observations:
>
>	1) I don't see that paying a programmer is any better or
>	   worse of an activity based on who he works for.
>
>	2) I don't care who gets the money, as long as I get good
>	   software, at a reasonable price, with good support.

And in my reply I explained why I disagree with you on both points.
Why do you have so much trouble accepting that not everyone agrees
with you? 

>You used those two observations as an excuse to build a strawman so
>that you could knock it down.
>
>Carry on all the crusades you want, just do them on your own, or with
>someone that is perhaps more opposed to you.  Don't use me as your
>whipping boy.

Really, Mr. Farris, you shouldn't post your personal opinions to the
net if you can't handle differing opinions.  I'm not picking on you.
I'm not saying I'm right and you're wrong.  I'm saying I disagree, and
giving my rationale. 

Let's not lose track of the real question: Given the choice between
the FSF and a for-profit supplier of GNU software, who do you buy
from?  For many, the choice will be determined by price or
convenience, and I can't fault them for that.  But Len's point, I
believe, is that buying the tape from FSF is a clever way to get your
company to financially support the development of more free software.

=========
The opinions expressed above are mine.

"The 80x86 world has no excuse for the mess it has gotten itself into."
					-- Doug Gwyn