mjranum@gouldsd.UUCP (02/17/87)
I gather that uuslave.c (and extensions) are being re-formatted into a GNU uuslave that will be maintained under the GNU license. While this is, in some sense, a very good thing, there are two aspects that bother me personally: 1) The people who are incorporating uuslave into GNU are NOT the original authors. The original author is not known, and cannot be expected to speak for him/her/its self on the net. Possibly the original author was expecting to control modification and distribution personally. It is equally possible, since the provenance of the code is unknown, that it is, in fact, proprietary in some degree. I recently posted some of my own hacks to uuslave to the net, under the assumption that it was public domain and would remain as such. I placed my own comments in the file, and inserted a note that it was me that made the mods, I did not take the liberty to place a copyright statement of my own in the work. I feel that the approach in this case, of taking uuslave and making it GNU licensed is rather obnoxious. If GNU wants a uuslave, they can bloody well do it from scratch, or leave copyrights out of it. 2) recently I have read unpleasant rumors of Microsoft C producing 'Copyright Microsoft' headers in executables. I fear that this same kind of thing may wind up happening with the GNU uuslave. Not that anyone would be so tacky as to make a uucp clone insert the magic 'Copyright under the terms of the... etc...' in all output files, but in this absurd day and age, it pays to be vigilant. I fear the almighty lawyer, who runs rampant, looking to make a lucrative buck over any potentially valuable software. I hope I'm not alone in feeling this way. I've followed the net discussion of the public domain yacc crisis. I hope that any other people who feel the same as I do can continue to maintain the former anarchic spirit of computing and let the corporate/legal mindset stew in their own filth. If anyone wants a pd uuslave.c, I'll give 'em a copy, and fuck anyone else. --mjr; -- "It is better to shred the bugger than to bugger the shredder." -ancient doltic proverb.
budd@bu-cs.UUCP (02/18/87)
Ahhhh but 'public domain' means that anyone can do ANYTHING they want with it, including making their own changes and distributing them under a copyright (ie; GNU), or for money. While I may not agree with RMS on all matters, I feel that he is trying to provide quality software, free to all, and trying to protect it from ever becomming proprietary. Are you more anxious to see people take your generously donated version of uuslave and SELL it, binary only than you are to have RMS give sources away? I feel indebted to RMS for his gift of GNU emacs, and I would gladly donate work of mine with the guarantee that it never be 'hoarded' Phil Budne Boston University Distributed Systems