Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!AI.MIT.EDU!rms
From: rms@AI.MIT.EDU
Newsgroups: gnu.gcc
Subject: Some people won't use GCC
Message-ID: <8906022109.AA00195@sugar-bombs.ai.mit.edu>
Date: 2 Jun 89 21:09:00 GMT
References: <6862@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
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Distribution: gnu
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1. My lawyer says we can enforce the copyleft.  There is no reason to
believe a government agency merely by deciding to do so could defeat
it.  (Aside from that, government agencies tend to like the idea.)

2. The reasons you give for which certain companies won't use GCC seem
rather irrational.  My policies have been consistent and have varied
only in small details ever since the GNU project has existed.  

3. I know for a fact that Digital employees use GNU software all over
the place; and IBM people have also submitted extensions to it.  So I
doubt very much that these companies have a uniform policy of the sort
you describe.  

In addition, various companies, including MCC and NeXT, have found in
practice that the problems referred to do not exist.  

4. It may still be true that some parts of those companies have the
beliefs and follow the policies you quote.  If so, it's their loss.  

5. I am willing to believe that, for this reason, you wish for a
compiler that these companies could use in proprietary software.  In a
nutshell, those parts of those companies demand your support for their
policies of restricting the users, and you wish to give it to them.  

6. However, I have no interest in helping to develop such a thing.

My purpose in developing software is to discourage the practice of
forbidding end users to share and modify software.  If I had not used
the copyleft, I would have entirely failed to advance this aim.  

7. I appreciate the help you have given me in testing GCC in the past.
However, I don't find it so vital that I would start working toward an
end that I don't consider worthwhile, in order to have your
cooperation in achieving it.  That would be putting the means above
the ends.

8. Getting people research funding from DEC or IBM, while I see
nothing objectionable about it, is not my aim.  I would not be willing
to take off the copyleft even to get funds for myself.  So it would be
silly for me to do so to help you get funds.  

  
Accepting the world "as it is" means abandoning the attempt to improve
it.  If I were willing to accept proprietary software, why not also
accept today's state of the art?