clive@drutx.ATT.COM (Clive Steward) (08/02/88)
From article <8807301252.AA07037@binkley.inria.fr>, by tiemann@binkley.inria.fr: > > for all x st. F (x) G (x) "FSF software has its price" > for all x st. F (x) D (x) "All FSF software is toy software" > > Clive: what would this remarkable argument lead one to expect about > AT&T software, or any other software which bears a copyright notice? Well, first of all, you really should understand that I am an independent consultant, not in any way AT&T employee, though I do do some work for them. Those who know me would recognize a rather unavoidably anarchistic nature also. I just don't believe that being foolish is a way to accomplish change in the world; and this FSF license seems a very sad kind of foolishness, given the effort put into writing these programs. That's why the moment of expressed emotion, for which I should apologize, in case I'm wrong. Personally speaking, I know I'd be very happy, with the opportunity a world such as Ursula LeGuin's Anarres (The Dispossessed, kind of a wonderful book) would offer. But also think I'd be pretty silly to think I'd get to one by force, rather than by demonstrating its attraction. It's a principle of art, as well as politics. Given an academic setting, or in the case of experimentation for one's own enlightenment, surely the quality of the FSF offerings is not toylike. But if I want to make something which might be nice for other people to use outside the institutional world (and is there freedom there...), I just bet I stand a much better chance of getting it to them through the self-motivated efforts of individuals in the mechanism of business. Maybe I can even smile, by subverting through offering real new principles in action, rather than by some relabeled (of course more moral!) brand of force. Listen to the music, and if you like it, you're there. Through the centuries, by the way, music has been written for people who pay for it to be written, and own the results. Think we can do better for something with as small a world as software? Clive Steward