rms@AI.MIT.EDU (07/03/90)
Giving Lotus the power to control who uses the interface users know is bad for the public interest and takes away our freedom. (For arguments for this, see the position paper that I mentioned recently.) It is short-sighted to consider only the cost Lotus might choose to impose on us in this occasion. Even if, amazingly, they were to make it so small as to be insignificant, there is no reason to expect the next owner of a user interface monopoly to do likewise. For both of these reasons, what we must do is try to take away Lotus's new power. If Lotus offers a few of us surrender on painless terms, we should still keep resisting. For the Free Software Foundation, this is a moot point, since the alternative of surrender is not available. Licenses usually require payment per copy. There is no way for this to be done for a free program. We cannot require our users to pay Lotus when they redistribute (not even in special cases), nor can we pay the fee for them.
pld@au-bon-pain.jj.lcs.mit.edu (Peter L. DeWolf) (07/03/90)
What does this have to do with Emacs? It doesn't even have anything to do with Free Software Foundation's GNU Emacs, although it does relate to FSF's aims. Please keep the politics in gnu.misc.discuss.