brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) (04/02/85)
Thanks to all those who sent me the names of their favourite PD programs. I was aware of most of them. The fact remains that quality PD software is the exception, and not the rule. You should all keep this in mind. Living on the net creates an artificial impression of what the world is like. There's lots of people sitting around with free time, working for places like Universities who's charter is to put things in the public domain. The real world is different. Most of the PD stuff is garbage. The rest are labours of love which are eventually left for other things. At least when it comes to intellectual property, he is. Read even the GNU manifesto. Can you claim that his views are not extreme? In this I claim the word fanatic. I suppose that is a slightly insulting term, so I may be slightly guilty, but I still think it is fairly descriptive. As for communism, RMS believes that all programs should come from those with ability (without material reward for that ability) and be given to those with need. That is the communist creed, more or less. I did not use this term as an insult, but rather as a compact way of describing his creed as it pertains to software. He might very well agree with it if you ask him - I don't know. It is up to you to decide what you feel of the philosphy. Just like you can call me a capitalist or free-enterpriser. The term is descriptive, and you may make value judgements later based on your opinion of the philosphy of free enterprise. Anyway, observation shows that maintaining software is boring and not usually a desired job. The best people would rather do their own stuff. Thus RMS's supposition that companies will spring up that charge for GNU support is shaky. In the high-demand market that programming is, would you do this if you could do something of your own instead? Certainly people will do things like this, but they will never be first raters. The first raters will be off doing something else. All luck to RMS and crew if they can produce a quality program that is consistent and remains so. All luck to us if they only half-succeed. -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
jay@unm-la.UUCP (04/05/85)
> Thanks to all those who sent me the names of their favourite PD programs. > I was aware of most of them. The fact remains that quality PD software > is the exception, and not the rule. You should all keep this in mind. > -- > Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473 Quoted (without permission) from the lead article in this week's (1 April 1985) _New_Yorker_: A harlem schoolteacher told us once that, given crayons and paper, an inner-city boy or girl will often draw a house -- not a boarded-over row house with a drunk in the doorway but a red house with a front door and four windows and a tree in the yard and smoke curling from the chimney. Never mind that in such children's neighborhoods smoke mostly means arson; their impression of what a house is like somehow overwhelms the examples all around them. In somewhat the same way, a bigot can never be convinced he is wrong, though obviously he is. Examples can't dislodge the reality in his head; they only confirm it. ... George Orwell, in "Down and Out in Paris and London," writes of a "rather superior tramp" who finds himself, for want of the few tools he needs to practice his trade, reduced to living in the shelters for the homeless. Paupers, this superior tramp continues to maintain, are lazy good-for-nothings: "You don't want to have any pity on these here tramps -- scum, they are: You don't want to judge them by the same standards as men like you and me. They're scum, just scum." The point of all this is not that the schoolchild or the bigot or the tramp is right or wrong; it is that impressions are tenacious, even when you live with counter-examples. -- Jay Plett {{ucbvax,gatech}!unmvax, lanl}!unm-la!jay
chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) (05/02/85)
In article <259@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes: >Thanks to all those who sent me the names of their favourite PD programs. >I was aware of most of them. The fact remains that quality PD software >is the exception, and not the rule. You should all keep this in mind. >Living on the net creates an artificial impression of what the world is A secondary and equally important fact is that quality commercial software is also the exception and not the rule. I include in this everything from Apple II software to Macintosh software to Unix ports I wouldn't use the hard disk it is on to frisbee train my dog. Remember Sturgeons law -- 90% of everything is crap. For every bad piece of PD software, I can name a bad piece of commercial software that cost some poor sucker real money to find out it was useless. >At least when it comes to intellectual property, he is. Read even the >GNU manifesto. Can you claim that his views are not extreme? In this >I claim the word fanatic. Personal pejoratives on RMS shouldn't be used to attack GNU. The project and the person are two separate entities. Attacking RMS doesn't lessen the potentials or problems of GNU, they avoid the issue. -- :From the offices of Pagans for Cthulhu: Chuq Von Rospach {cbosgd,fortune,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo}!nsc!chuqui nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA Who shall forgive the unrepentant?