gudeman@arizona.edu (David Gudeman) (08/07/89)
In article <4755@omepd.UUCP> dan@mipon2.intel.com (Dan Casali) writes: >I have been quite pleased with ProIcon, and have ordered MaxSPITBOL as well. >I previously had been running the Arizona Mac Icon, which must be run >under MPW and doesn't handle files very nicely. Interesting that this should come up during the discussion of copylefting. It is an example of one situation in which public domain was better than an FSF copyright. I know for a fact that the Icon group would never have developed a better MAC environment; we had neither the time nor the interest. Someone else might have done so eventually, but it seems unlikely that the product would have been as good. _But_ since the UA implementation of Icon is public domain, freely available software, Catspaw was able to obtain the source, improve it, and sell the improved version to a large market of people who aren't really interested in getting their own sources. The Icon project benifits because we like to see Icon more widely used, Catspaw benifits because they get a profit, and Catspaw's customers benifit because they have a better Icon. It's fairly safe to say that if Icon had been copylefted, this would never have happened. -- David Gudeman Department of Computer Science The University of Arizona gudeman@arizona.edu Tucson, AZ 85721 {allegra,cmcl2,ihnp4,noao}!arizona!gudeman