pst@anise.acc.com (Paul Traina) (06/01/89)
Premise: Apple's look & feel suit sets a dangerous precedent which could harm the FSF. Justification: If Apple sucessfully sues Microsoft & wins, what is there to stop AT&T (if they desire) from suing the FSF for bison, gcc, and other products? Premise: We must cause the look-and-feel suit to fail. The legal precedent must not be set. Justification: see above Commentary: Ok, so we'll be hurt if those fascists at Apple-legal win. It will directly jepordise the FSF. Premise: The boycott of Apple by the FSF is a complete failure. Justification: The boycott is supposed to "hurt" Apple. It should make them think twice about attacking the freedom of programmers to build upon the concepts of others. The FSF boycott has not hurt Apple. Commentary: I would hesitate to guess that not one Mac order has been cancelled because of the actions of the FSF. The boycott does not affect those who speicify & order Apple products, it affects those of us who know of the FSF-subculture and use their products. The original idea was to stop Apple from pursuing the suit. Not only has the boycott failed there, but it failed in the more general attempt to hurt Apple in the wallet. Claim: We should stop the boycott NOW. It is time to go back to the black-board and come back with an alternate plan that will settle the Apple/Microsoft suit in our favor. Justification: We failed to accomplish what we attempted to do (Stop the suit). We are hurting users (remember the common man?), not Apple. We are getting caught up in internal politics that are destructive to the FSF as a whole.
tale@pawl.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence) (06/01/89)
In <1Rd512#2N2hXM=pst@anise.acc.com> pst@anise.acc.com (Paul Traina) writes:
Paul> Claim:
Paul> We should stop the boycott NOW. It is time to go back to the
Paul> black-board and come back with an alternate plan that will
Paul> settle the Apple/Microsoft suit in our favor.
Why should we stop the boycott? While I agree that perhaps there
coule a better plan of attack and we should investigate it, where does
stopping the boycott get us? No where that I can see. If we are
going to come up with an alternate plan it certainly does not at this
point preclude continuing the boycott.
Dave
--
(setq mail '("tale@pawl.rpi.edu" "tale@itsgw.rpi.edu" "tale@rpitsmts.bitnet"))pst@anise.acc.com (Paul Traina) (06/01/89)
The following is my response to a piece of mail I received. Since I have not asked the author of the original mail for permission to post, I have sanitized it of identification. --pst > After one picket and you are ready to declare failure? The fight has > only just begun. I think what we are doing now strengthens FSF. If > it weeds out the pseudohackers and the faint of heart, so be it. Sure, we should fight this goddamn menace, but the boycott is a mistake. The only people you hurt are those who would most benefit from the existance of the FSF. The boycott hurts our peers not Apple. What we need to do is get amnius-curie (friend-of-the-court, and I know I didn't spell it correctly) status in the court battle. We have to convince the judge that there is no such thing as a look-and-feel copyright. This will set legal precedent. Even if you managed to stop Apple by continuing the boycott (which there is not chance in hell of you doing--the idiots who make these decisions probably don't even know the FSF exists, and if they did, they would laugh at us), what do we do when the next company tries some look-and-feel thing (vis-a-vis Lotus)? The entire point is to stop the lawsuit. The boycott doesn't have a chance in hell of doing that. No offense intended, but get off your ivory tower and open up your eyes! I've followed your postings in this group, I can't agree with you. It's great to be gung ho for the FSF-- I myself feel the same way, but we're not doing the right thing here. As I've said before, you can't remove a cancer with a club, it takes a knife. We have to protect the rights and freedoms of programmers, yet there are those that appear to believe that "The End Justfies the Means". I hope I'm wrong.
pst@anise.acc.com (Paul Traina) (06/01/89)
[POLITICAL WARNING: this message has nothing to do with gcc technical aspects. If we had a "gnu.politics" or an info-gnu-politics mailing list, I would place it there. I have redirected usenet followups to me.] Paul> We should stop the boycott NOW. Dave> Why should we stop the boycott? In the essense of terseness, read my previous messages about my perception of the failure of the boycott. I think we should stop the boycott because it did not serve its purpose (Apple is still suing Microsoft) and it is contrary to the very principles that the FSF was founded on. I don't mean to offend, but IMHO it was a punative short sighed measure that has not hurt the intended victim, but as been a disservice to FSF supporters. Right now, I hope RMS & Len are considering supporting the movement to rescind the Apple boycott. I didn't agree with it at the time, and I had been thinking about proposing to cancel the boycott at the USENIX BOF. I then thought about how the Apple suit could affect the FSF, so I decided to keep my mouth shut. Dave Berry brought this thing to a head, and now it's time to re-think our position. We need to band together and fight look-and-feel lawsuits. We don't need the execess baggage of a punative and useless boycott. I think I'm not _totally_ off base when I claim that the FSF was established to help maximize the flow of information. That's always been the stated goal of RMS's politics. ((grin) just ask someone at Symbolics) The boycott seemed like the only way we could "strike back" at the bullies at Apple. Unfortunately, it has made the FSF into a bully itself. That's not what we're supposed to be about. Fight lawyers, not other programmers.
shap@polya.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan S. Shapiro) (06/01/89)
In article <1Rd92D#3CBSgm=pst@anise.acc.com> pst@anise.acc.com (Paul Traina) writes: >The boycott hurts our peers not Apple. What we need to do is get >amnius-curie (friend-of-the-court, and I know I didn't spell it correctly) >status in the court battle. We have to convince the judge that there is no >such thing as a look-and-feel copyright. This will set legal precedent. > This is a very good idea, and I think it is right to the point. Does anyone know how to go abuot doing this? What concrete steps can the FSF group take to accomplish this? Jon Shapiro
childers@avsd.UUCP (Richard Childers) (06/10/89)
pst@anise.acc.com (Paul Traina) writes: >The only people you hurt are those who would most benefit from the existance >of the FSF. The boycott hurts our peers not Apple. What we need to do is get >amnius-curie (friend-of-the-court, and I know I didn't spell it correctly) >status in the court battle. We have to convince the judge that there is no >such thing as a look-and-feel copyright. This will set legal precedent. This is an excellent idea, and I second it. I'm not a member of the FSF - although I've acquired and / or installed some of the software they've generated for various sites - but I do have some ideas as to how to influence the legal system, and this is an excellent tactic. I would be willing to contribute to any sort of legal defense fund set up to facilitate this coming about in a timely manner, provided that its existence was announced via netnews, so that I would be likely to see it in a timely manner. -- richard -- * "We must hang together, gentlemen ... else, we shall most assuredly * * hang separately." Benjamin Franklin, 1776 * * * * ..{amdahl|decwrl|octopus|pyramid|ucbvax}!avsd.UUCP!childers@tycho *