RMS%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC (04/18/83)
Each time the commercial marketing of Unix Emacs causes someone to forego it due to price, or to be unable to use it as he would have liked to due to license restrictions, society as a whole has been sabotaged a certain amount. Gosling does deserve a considerable reward for having written a useful program, but sadly he deserves to lose a lot of that as penalty for sabotaging its use now that it is written. Don't let yourself be sabotaged! Meanwhile, if you are thinking you may be stuck with paying these prices, and you don't belive in doing something illegal even if it is good for the world, you still have an alternative. An editor is being written in NIL. It's at an early stage but it's far enough along for its implementor to use it to edit as he adds to it. A Unix that can support shared programs is coming from Berkeley. NIL for Unix is being worked on (and for VMS is already available, and public). Since this will be a true Emacs rather than a semi-ersatz one, it will be far better than Goslings. This editor is supposed to be publicly available. So just hold on a while -- help is on the way. Sooner if you can help with the work. Note: I am amazed to hear of programs being "destroyed" by being public domain. Are Gosling and I on the same planet? I suspect most of the Arpanet community would much prefer if Unix Emacs were public domain. Note 2: Is Gosling going to pay out a share of the royalties to all of you who contributed extensions when you were under the misapprehension that you were working for the common good? -------
James.Gosling@CMU-CS-VLSI.ARPA (04/19/83)
Satotage? I contend that there are more people who don't use Emacs now because of it's present distribution mechanism than won't because of it's price. The total lack of support and maintenance has turned away many people. I get sent tapes and it takes literally months for me to return them. That turns off far more people than price. Universites are unusual cases. Besides. Prices are made of rubber, they can easily change. James.
guy (04/20/83)
I get the feeling Gosling has real work to do; does he also have time to
put out endless free copies of his Emacs and provide upgrades, support, etc.?
Sorry, son, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Just because he wrote
a good and popular editor doesn't mean its users have a right to chain him
to that program.
Guy Harris
RLG Corporation
{seismo,mcnc,we13}!rlgvax!guymis@Berkeley (04/22/83)
RMS is obviously not on the same planet I'm on either. Unfortunately, I don't have the self-restraint to ignore his adolescent flamings about the way the world ought to be, not to mention his ad hominem attacks on Gosling and his Emacs. It seems to me reasonable that Gosling do whatever he wants with his Emacs. He's spent YEARS developing what is almost product quality code, distributing it generously and widely, documenting it and answering questions about it, and nobody can insist he do it in perpetuity. And someone dedicated needs to do it, or it will become old and ugly (as will we all, someday). My understanding is that nobody has put restrictions on what James could do with their improvements. It seems a fair trade to me that they could have an Emacs for their use without cost. The UniPress people (whom I know to be honest and businesslike) propose to invest time and money into doing the other 5% that takes so much effort (keeping up with Berkeley for example) AND maintenance AND support on a number of Unix machines, including some new ones. Why shouldn't they realize a return on their investment? And why shouldn't James get something back for all his time? Does RMS really think someone should do MAINTENANCE and not be paid? (By the way, UniPress is not Microsoft or IBM -- it's Fred Pack and Mark Krieger who are using their own money. It's very easy for someone with an ARPA sinecure to criticize...) The prices don't seem outrageous to me for a multiuser system. It would be nice if they had lower rates for educational and multiuser situations. $1000 is kind of high for a single-user system, but I imagine they'll price it appropriately for the smaller machines, and in response to competition. The next time I'd like to hear from RMS is when NIL and "true" Emacs are as usable for doing real software development as Gosling's "semi-ersatz" one is now is. At that point he might have some credibility (though from my limited exposure to him it seems unlikely -- I remember a dim sum last year when he accused someone of being "sleazy" simply because he worked at IBM Yorktown). Mark Seiden
GZ@MIT-MC (04/22/83)
From: Gail Zacharias <GZ @ MIT-MC>
Date: 21 Apr 83 17:16:08 PST (Thu)
From: dagobah!mis at Berkeley
...
Does RMS really think someone should do MAINTENANCE and not be paid?
...
The next time I'd like to hear from RMS is when NIL and "true" Emacs are as
usable for doing real software development as Gosling's "semi-ersatz" one
is now is. At that point he might have some credibility (though from my
limited exposure to him it seems unlikely ...)
Mark Seiden
Before more people go embarass themselves with ignorant flames like the one
above, there one little fact they should know:
RMS has plenty of credibility. He is the author of the real, original,
that-which-Gosling's-and-all-others-imitate Twenex/ITS Emacs. He maintained it
for much longer than Gosling's emacs has been in existence. His Emacs continues
to thrive and is still available for free to anybody who wants it..