mouse@mcgill-vision.UUCP (der Mouse) (05/14/88)
In article <8804300706.AA08462@EDDIE.MIT.EDU>, DAVIS@blue.sdr.slb.COM writes: > Dear GNU people > I have just spent about a month doing on-and-off development work of > GNU Emacs for users here, [...] > [F]or front-end users, who don't want to write new bits of an already > huge system, but *do* want a polished, friendly and helpful editor, > my fear is that GNU does not match Unipress. Quite likely true. Why? Well.... > [I]t occurs to me that here I am, hacking mouse-drag-modeline until > early in the morning, doing this for love rather than money, whilst > somewhere in Edison, NJ, there are guys whose *job* it is to produce > silky stuff like this, and make money from it ... ....this is why. People are willing to pay for a polished, "friendly", and "helpful" editor. As far as I can tell, you aren't allowed to charge for modified versions of GNU, (though you are allowed to charge for making the modifications, or for just the modifications...I think). (I put "friendly" and "helpful" in quotes because I generally find such things to be neither. But then, I'm highly atypical.) > Why this message ? Well, how about a little moral support ? Why *is* > GNU better than Unipress ? Don't tell me about e-lisp, I want to be > able to turn around to users and say "look at the smooth, intuitive > sophisticated interface this has". Then I don't think GNU is better than Unipress - for this application (ie, user community). But realize also that one person's smooth intuitive sophisticated interface is another person's pain in the fingers. I have seen some version of Unipress Emacs running as a Sun tool, and frankly, give me plain vanilla Gosling any day. It had all sorts of cute features, but I don't think I'd use a one of them, so why should they clutter up my binary, and more importantly, why should I pay for them? Not to start another round of editor wars, but realize, please, that editor taste differs as widely as any other sort of taste. GNU is, I believe, the best general-purpose editor available today. (The reasons I don't use it are primarily historical, and will be explained via email on request.) The key is that little phrase "general-purpose". If you want a polished user interface, that's one sort of specialization, and GNU trades off some of this polish for improvements in other areas, like lisp and price. Don't expect GNU to be all things to all people - nothing can be. > So: why no modeline dragging in emacstool ? why no decent menus ? why > no built in help-on-mouse-thing ? why no [...] Because nobody's done it, obviously. > \begin{what I don't need to be told} > wait till you see Sun's new GNU-based Textedit ... ($$) > GNU's X support is perfect ... > GNU is free ... > FSF has less money than Unipress ... > \end{what I don't need to be told} You already know the answers to your question then; why bother asking? Work gets done on a piece of software only when there are programmers motivated to do it (and capable of doing it!). One motivation, so common as to be nearly universal, is money. There are others, though, such as the desire to have a useful tool available, or because it looks like the Right Thing to Do. GNU is driven by almost all of these, money being one notable exception (*the* exception?). If you believe a piece of software is imperfect, don't just complain. You'll have to do something in order for it to get better. This means either fix it yourself or pay for someone else to fix it (or con them into fixing it :-). (If you're paying, eg a maintenance contract, and it isn't getting fixed, *then* by all means complain.) > How can I best help the FSF ? Do what you're doing - improve GNU - and send the improvements back to the FSF for incorporation into the next version. Or so I would say, but then, what do I know - I merely agree with many of the aims of the FSF, but am not actively involved in it. der Mouse uucp: mouse@mcgill-vision.uucp arpa: mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu
nate@mipos3.intel.com (Nate Hess) (05/16/88)
In article <1092@mcgill-vision.UUCP> mouse@mcgill-vision.UUCP (der Mouse) writes: >People are willing to pay for a polished, "friendly", >and "helpful" editor. As far as I can tell, you aren't allowed to >charge for modified versions of GNU, (though you are allowed to charge >for making the modifications, or for just the modifications...I think). My understanding of the GNU copyleft boils down to this: You can charge for modified versions of GNU. You can charge whatever you want. However, if the person/company that acquired the modified version from you requests it, you have to send them machine-readable source code for GNU, as well as any and all modifications with which you supplied them. In addition, they are perfectly free to redistribute that version to whomever they so desire, at whatever price they wish, (including free) without notifying you. --woodstock -- "How did you get your mind to tilt like your hat?" ...!{decwrl|hplabs!oliveb|pur-ee|qantel|amd}!intelca!mipos3!nate <domainish> : nate@mipos3.intel.com ATT : (408) 765-4309