From: jas@ISI.EDU (Jeff Sullivan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps
Subject: Re: Stallman & lawyers (was Re: SPA piracy raid at Oregon?)
Date: 28 Jul 92 01:17:57 GMT
Organization: USC-ISI
In-reply-to: robert@metropolis.com's message of 26 Jul 92 19:54:54 GMT

In article <1992Jul26.195454.25350@metropolis.com> robert@metropolis.com (Robert Munyer) writes:

>In article <D2150035.9b5fum@outpost.SF-Bay.org> peirce@outpost.SF-Bay.org
>(Michael Peirce) writes:
>
>> Come on.  Stallman would like to see the end of the commercial software
>> industry as we know it.
>
>Abbreviations:
>   FSF  -- Free Software Foundation
>   LPF  -- League for Programming Freedom
>   NTFL -- Not Too Likely
>
>Is the FSF trying to kill off the commercial software industry "as we know it"?
>Maybe; I'm not convinced.  If they are, are they going to succeed?  NTFL.  FSF
>has about as much chance of killing off this industry as Communism had of
>killing off capitalism.  I am NOT worried about this.
>
>But there IS a group out there that is working real hard at killing off all
>software development as we know it.  Who is it?  [drum roll please]  It's
>LAWYERS and the companies that hire them, specifically the Look-And-Feel guys
>and the Patented-Algorithm guys.  If these guys get their way, the software
>development process will be slowly strangled, until it withers up and dies.
>
>The software industry is full of brilliant, hard-working people.  One of the
>biggest reasons it can attract this kind of people is the FREEDOM of creation--
>you are free to think of anything your mind can imagine, and then you sit down
>and create it.

How "creative" are you to take what someone else has done (spending
millions of dollars in R&D), add a bell or a whistle, and sell
zillions of copies?

Not very much, IMHO.  And that is what companies are really afraid of.
That they blow the money on R&D, and all the product trials and
errors, and then someone else steps in, clones their product, and
takes half the market share with none of the risks.

>
>> Personally I boycott anything that is associated with GNU.
>
>I hope you meant this to be a joke, because it's REALLY funny.  I bet they
>[chuckle] are really missing the [giggle] income that they're losing [ha ha]
>because you're *boycotting* [hee hee] all those free [HAW HAW HAW] products!
>

Perhaps you missed the gist of his point: he does it on *principle*.
I, too, am vehemently against Stallman's politicking, but I support
his desire to create quality products under the CNU "license."
However, how many GNU products look professional in terms of interface
on personal computers or workstations?

His impact on the Mac (before his "boycot" of Apple) was virtually
nil.

If you like Unix, then you don't really care about interface anyway,
but to me, a computer is a tool first, and a buddy second.  I want to
get my job done, not learn how to make the computer perform tricks.

For most people, whose "end result" is outside of a computer, this is
probably more important to them than all that goes on behind the
scenes.

jas






--
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Jeffrey A. Sullivan		| Research Scientist at small
jas@venera.isi.edu		| Information Sciences Institute
jas@isi.edu                    	| University of Southern California