thomps@gitpyr.gatech.EDU (Ken Thompson) (11/11/86)
You people have got to be kidding. You are exploding because someone is
charging $9.00 to distribute a public domain program. Everyone in the
world does not enjoy or wish to waste their time browsing bulletin boards
looking for good publically available software and downloading it. Frankly,
I have better things to do and so do a lot of other people I know. We are
perfectly pleased to pay a nominal fee to get the software already on disk
and ready to go. $9.00 including a disk cannot be considered gouging by
any stretch of the imagination. This service just provides another segment
of the computing community with access to the software.
Comparisons with Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation are ludicrous.
He is concerned about true gouging,e.g, 60k for a UNIX source license.
Incidentally FSF charges more than $100 as a distribution charge for GNU
EMACS.
Make up your mind whether you want the software to be publically distributed
or if you want control of it. If you really want the software to be freely
distributed you cannot reasonably object to someone performing the service
of locating and putting this software on a disk for me for a nominal fee.
FLAME AWAY - You'll only look sillier than you already do.
--
Ken Thompson Phone : (404) 894-7089
Georgia Tech Research Institute
Georgia Insitute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!thomps