gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) (10/27/88)
greid@ondine.COM (Glenn Reid) wrote: > ...Adobe has a great interest in Sun > Microsystems, and would love to see them use our Display PostScript > implementation rather than a "clone." Since I'm neither Sun Micro nor Adobe, I know nothing of what transpires between them. But one point where Adobe and Sun have different policies is regarding the source code for their PostScript interpreters. My company, Grasshopper Group, licensed Sun's NeWS for $25,000 plus per-copy royalties. For this we get full source code to everything -- not only the exact source to the Sun binaries, but also a more portable version. Anybody can do this. Adobe's policy as far as I have been able to find out is to sell you a BINARY of the interpreter for some large sum, which you can then link with your own window system object code to produce a product. The source code is not available to the public at any price. (IBM and/or NeXT may have gotten a better deal, but the Grasshopper Group is unlikely to.) I can't see how Sun could adopt Display PostScript as the base technology in NeWS without a much more liberal Adobe source code policy. Certainly I would be bothered if NeWS only became available to licensees in binary -- Sun binaries won't run on Mac-II's, which is where our product runs, so we would not be able to adopt future versions of NeWS. Besides, we like to support and enhance our product, and if we didn't have source to 9/10ths of it, that would be rather tough. I agree that it would be nice if NeWS was exactly compatible with the PostScript that runs in laser printers, but it is approaching that now, bugfix by bugfix. -- John Gilmore {sun,pacbell,uunet,pyramid,amdahl}!hoptoad!gnu gnu@toad.com Noriega-Bush in '88 -- a *crack* team. Let's put the white powder (CIA = Cocaine Import Agency) in the white house!