dwb@sticks.aux.apple.com (David W. Berry) (05/31/89)
It has now been slightly over a week since I made my original posting noting that GCC Version 1.35 for A/UX was available for anonymous ftp from apple.com. The work necessary to port GCC was done on my own time, at my own expense, (and the request of Hugh Daniel, John Gilmore, and The Grasshopper Group) because collectively we felt that A/UX needed a better compiler and the most effective way of achieving that was to port gcc. Subsequently, the changes were made available via anonymous ftp so that the work I performed, and for which I received no compensation, could benefit others. In the intervening week I have received mail from Len Tower observing that no postings advertising products for the great demon Apple were acceptable in this newsgroup which is the private property of the Free Software Foundation and the GNU project. It went on to state that if I didn't voluntarily refrain from further such postings that measures would be taken to prevent me from making further postings. At the same time, there was a posting by Richard Stallman turning my simple effort to assist those around me, into a political action. I was accused of "gloating... because he turned the GNU project's own mailing list toward the end of prohibiting free software." And you were urged "don't cooperate with Apple's use of GCC." Cooperate with it or not, Apple doesn't currently use and to the best of my knowledge, has no intentions of using gcc. My original posting was very intentionally nonpolitical, because my goals in porting and providing support for various GNU products is that I wish to use them for my own personal development, and was hoping to avoid all other issues. Richard, Leonard, and the rest of the Free Software Foundation, claim to stand for free rights to software for all individuals. I believe it is well within their right of free speech to urge you to boycott Apple and with their rights to boycott Apple themselves. It's a crying shame that they can't see the hypocrisy involved choosing to deny me my right to free speech in a publicly accessible and publicly supported forum. Whether they like it or not gnu.gcc is not the private property of the FSF, but is a public forum which I choose to use to notify other users of A/UX and Gnu products of new ports. Remember that FSF bears NONE OF THE COST OF DISTRIBUTING either the gnu.gcc news group, mailing list or any of the other news groups. The extent of their support is in answering questions posted to the group and in maintaining the mailing list assosciated with gnu.gcc. All other expenses (ie., the phone charges that perform all of the distribution) are carried by other individuals and corporations. Given the current censorship threats on the part of the Free Software Foundation I can but hope you see this message. David Opinions: MINE, ALL MINE! (greedy evil chuckle) David W. Berry (A/UX Toolbox Engineer) dwb@apple.com 973-5168@408.MaBell AppleLink: berry1
wolfgang@mgm.mit.edu (Wolfgang Rupprecht) (05/31/89)
Its amazing how political space is curved. Go too far in any one direction and you meet the people that started off in the other direction. Its fairly clear (at least to me) that Apple as a corporation, needs a proctal exam (in a big way). Look and feel. Gimme a #$%&ing break. (I was about to buy a poor man's Sun, the Mac II, but didn't because of this BS.) Its a crying shame that this free bit of porting work, done in the spirit of sharing software of has drawn so much FSF fire. What is FSF's purpose if not to promote the FREE EXCHANGE OF SOFTWARE! Lets not lose sight of principles to win the war! -wolfgang Wolfgang Rupprecht ARPA: wolfgang@mgm.mit.edu (IP 18.82.0.114) TEL: (703) 768-2640 UUCP: mit-eddie!mgm.mit.edu!wolfgang
honey@mailrus.cc.umich.edu (peter honeyman) (05/31/89)
fsf's hypocrisy is plain to see, thanks for speaking out. wouldn't it be great if we could use fsf stuff without having to deal with fsf politics? peter
quiroz@cs.rochester.edu (Cesar Quiroz) (05/31/89)
I think the guys who ported GCC to A/UX should be allowed (indeed, who will forbid them with good authority?) to post about the availability of their porting. Especially if their porting efforts are made free. Let's keep the discussion here (or around here, in the gnu hierarchy anyway), because it is critical to the gnu effort. Having disclaimed that I sustain their right to participate in this groups, I take immediate advantage to attack this naive view (and hope we can discuss it here, where I think it belongs): In <2129@internal.Apple.COM>, dwb@sticks.aux.apple.com (David W. Berry) wrote: | ... My original posting was very intentionally nonpolitical, because | my goals in porting and providing support for various GNU products | is that I wish to use them for my own personal development, and was hoping | to avoid all other issues. ... Two things. You didn't keep it to yourself, and your position in Apple makes it absolutely unnecessary for the readers of your message to be concerned with your condition as an individual developer. You are justly perceived as an A/UX Engineer, and this appearance makes the alert reader analyze your messages from quite a different perspective, as below. Second, it is more precise to say that you hoped your posting would be seen as nonpolitical. Regrettably, your *actions* have a clear political value, whether you want it or not. For instance, what effect will a better compiler have on A/UX? I see it as an effort to make A/UX more viable, independently of the nice side effect of making your (and many others') personal development more pleasant. Ergo, GCC could make more profits for Apple, profits which can be expected to be turned (given Apple's current position) against some basic rights. Given the choice of keeping the privilege to pay for A/UX and lose the free FSF software, or let A/UX die of neglect and keep FSF around, I will take the second any day. I just hope (for the sake of the many good people working at Apple) that there is no need to choose. Apple is not making that hope any easier, by the way, but this could change quite easily. I won't buy a Mac until I know it is safe to do so... -- Cesar Augusto Quiroz Gonzalez Department of Computer Science University of Rochester Rochester, NY 14627
shap@polya.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan S. Shapiro) (05/31/89)
In general I support Richard's views about Apple's legal stance, though I am of the opinion that the most effective way to convince them is to make it profitless for them to compete with GNU, which means supporting GNU on their system. Be that as it may, Mr. Berry has a very strong point. It is entirely inappropriate for FSF or the posters to these groups to take the de facto view that free speech should somehow not be applicable to Apple. This is in essence morally equivalent to the stance that Apple has taken in the lawsuit, which strikes me as a bitter irony. David Berry has made it possible for many of us who have watched and suffered in frustration to make use of Richard's excellent work. Many of us purchased Macintosh II's not because we wished to develop for Apple, but because they were the cheapest reasonable UNIX platform in sight from which to develop for *other* machines. If I had it to do over again now, I wouldn't buy the Apple product, both because of their legal views and because their support policies for end users suck [and they don't supply free vaseline, either]. If I could financially justify dumping the machine I would, but I can't. This leaves me in the awkward position of being left out in the cold by the GNU project because of a mistake I can't afford to rectify. Richard will respond, in essence, "Tough luck", and that response is justifiable. The gnu newsgroups however, are in the public domain, and it is not appropriate for us to seek to limit the legitemate expressions of it's users, even if we disagree with their views. Such censorship stands in opposition to everything that FSF stands for. So express your disappointment with Apple and your disagreement with those who are supporting them. But don't threaten those who disagree with you - unless, of course, you think it is okay for them to threaten you... Jon
gjc@bu-cs.BU.EDU (George J. Carrette) (05/31/89)
I'm sick of seeing clap-trap about "fsf hypocrisy," when FSF has a well developed and consistent political philosphy. Granted, not *all* of its representatives are astute enough to carefully describe all the implications. "Wouldn't it be great if we could use the fsf stuff without having to deal with fsf politics" Ha, ha, ha! The fool who thinks this is not thinking in real-world terms. By the way, in reply to RMS's concern about lack of response to Apple's folly, don't worry, AUX is a dead issue. No rational buyer would purchase a machine to run AUX on over a Sparcstation or other similar options. So why worry about it? -gjc
spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) (06/01/89)
Here's another non-technical posting. If there was a gnu.discuss or something similar, I'd use it. Until then, this follows a previous posting here..... In article <1107@mailrus.cc.umich.edu> honey@citi.umich.edu (Peter Honeyman) writes: >wouldn't it be great if we could use fsf stuff without having to deal >with fsf politics? He got some posted abuse for that. However, his point bears some further discussion, or at least thought. Right now, it looks like a number of researchers I know, including a few here, are going to have to try to get financing to build a TRUE PUBLIC DOMAIN C compiler. We can't use gcc for our research. Let me explain. Like most researchers, I don't want to spend a lot of time building new tools when existing ones are available. I also don't want to spend a fortune buying a commercial tool, if I can help it. Now suppose I want to build something that needs to instrument some C code in some way -- maybe I need to include certain kinds of profiling commands, or new mechanisms for debugging. Gcc looks attractive -- it runs on my machine, and it doesn't cost my research grants any money. But what happens if I use it? Well, ignoring the fact that it's still in Beta test after months and months and months, and updates (and new bugs) just keep coming, there is problem of the copyleft. If I use the gcc compiler for my project and want to provide it to some companies to test against "real world" data, they won't take it. The folks at Bellcore, AT&T, IBM, DEC, and a bunch of others have already told me that they won't. Why? Because their corporate lawyers don't want to take any chance at all that internal project code is "contaminated" with copyleft software. They may have no plans whatsoever to market or otherwise commercially use my prototypes, but they would "contaminate" their labs if they accepted gcc-based software. That leaves me out in the cold. I can't get them to test my prototypes under real conditions, and they won't be interested in funding my research if they can't test the results. Now, if I really wanted to force the issue, every lawyer I've talked to says that the copyleft wouldn't last a minute in court. But I'm not interested in pursuing that, and neither are the major companies -- it's bad publicity. Especially so since RMS has threatened to fold up shop and stop work on GNU software. A lot of people would lose on that. Besides, none of those companies wants to fight that hard for software that really doesn't have anyone committed to its correct and continued functioning...except political fanatics/idealists; I'm certainly reluctant to base anything major on a compiler that has such spotty quality control. Of course, if a government agency decides to challenge the copyleft, that's it -- they don't care about public sentiment in a case like this. If I had access to a stable compiler that I could use, that had a copyright but waived all restriction on further use of the code, I would snap it up in a minute and dump gcc -- even if it meant I had to scrounge up a few $1000 to pay for it. There are differing realities in the world; idealism is a wonderful thing but it doesn't always match the majority of our realities. Some of us have to deal with the world as it is, not how we might like it to be. I think it painfully ironic that the politics of an effort to create an environment of free, shared software should lead some of us working on the next generation of software tools to wish that we could buy some software we need instead of use the free software available. -- Gene Spafford NSF/Purdue/U of Florida Software Engineering Research Center, Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-2004 Internet: spaf@cs.purdue.edu uucp: ...!{decwrl,gatech,ucbvax}!purdue!spaf
madd@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Jim Frost) (06/02/89)
In article <32029@bu-cs.BU.EDU> gjc@bu-cs.BU.EDU (George J. Carrette) writes: |By the way, in reply to RMS's concern about lack of response to Apple's folly, |don't worry, AUX is a dead issue. No rational buyer would purchase a machine |to run AUX on over a Sparcstation or other similar options. So why worry about |it? Have you priced a Mac IIcx against a Sun Sparcstation recently? The Sun is faster, but it isn't cheaper. That alone is why a rational buyer might pick Apple, although s/he drools over the Sun. About the A/UX port of GCC: I understand FSF's standpoint on Apple, and even agree with it to a point. The point I draw the line at is the one where censorship is drawn; just because you think Apple is a scum-of-the-earth company is no reason to censor people. Censorship isn't going to solve the problem, and in fact may exaggerate it by alienating those (like myself) who basically agree that Apple's lawsuits are rather counterproductive (if not downright silly). You don't like Apple? Don't support their products. Tell people you don't support them. You've done that in the past, no problem there. Someone comes out with a port of a FSF product, publicly announce you won't support it. But don't censor the person for his efforts -- they're in the same spirit as yours, they just don't follow your politics. jim frost madd@bu-it.bu.edu
wert@toaster.Sun.COM (Robert Scott Comer) (06/03/89)
Yes, I agree that fsf has been out of line re: apple. Free software is free, period. Computer scientists should be building on each other, not ripping each apart. David Berry did a nice piece of work on his own time. It should stand on its own merits. David might not even agree with his employers' ideas about how to protect their property. FSF's refusal to incorporate changes to enhance portability to AUX are despicable. Shame on you. You are no better than Apple. scott comer
pcg@aber-cs.UUCP (Piercarlo Grandi) (06/04/89)
In article <107886@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> wert@sun.UUCP (Robert Scott Comer) writes:
Yes, I agree that fsf has been out of line re: apple. Free software is
free, period. Computer scientists should be building on each other, not
ripping each apart. David Berry did a nice piece of work on his own time.
It should stand on its own merits. David might not even agree with his
employers' ideas about how to protect their property.
Let me say, let me say: whatever the evils of RMS in the eyes of people that
would like to take advantage of his *free* software to further their
*restricted* research or products, there are two points that seem to be
forgotten:
[1] The FSF do not want to *support* their sw on Apple products.
Consistently with their *free* sw policy, you are not
*forbidden* from using it on Apple computers, or supporting it
yourself. The FSF exercise their right not to do something
they don't like, while remaining consistent with their aims.
[2] The FSF are the copyright holder of their sw. They free to
impose whatever conditions (note, not *restrictions*) on
reproduction of their copyrighted work as they see fit. These
conditions are exceptionally mild, and are designed to promote
*free* sharing of their sw, including derivatives. If you don't
like this, get sw from somebody else that is prepared to offer
different conditions.
FSF's refusal to incorporate changes to enhance portability to AUX are
despicable. Shame on you. You are no better than Apple.
Of course, one can try to persuade RMS and the FSF to change their beliefs
or that their actions are inconsistent with them, but keeping well present
that they are respectable persons with a keen intellect, have contributed
much to the state of the art and the ability for many to share it, and they
surely are not ossified, but think over and over their decisions again.
As to me I quite agree with RMS on Apple. The only objection I think can be
made is that the support boycott might not be the best solution to the
problem of how to exert some pressure or influence against Apple's actions.
Even given this, in the absence of some better idea the support boycott is
an understandable reaction of the "we don't want to have to do with products
of companies we strongly dislike" sort. It might even make other people think
of why there is such strong dislike.
--
Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi | ARPA: pcg%cs.aber.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth | UUCP: ...!mcvax!ukc!aber-cs!pcg
Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.ukjeffrey@algor2.UUCP (Jeffrey Kegler) (06/07/89)
In article <6862@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) writes: > >If I use the gcc compiler for my project >and want to provide it to some companies to test against "real world" >data, they won't take it. The folks at Bellcore, AT&T, IBM, DEC, and >a bunch of others have already told me that they won't. Why? Because >their corporate lawyers don't want to take any chance at all that >internal project code is "contaminated" with copyleft software. The contamination aspect is a feature of the freerighting (or copyleft). In fact, it is its central feature. How often have you seen a large amount of public domain code infected with some proprietary stuff and removed from the public domain? It imposes difficulties, of course. It has to. I make my living writing software. If I use GNU stuff I have to let my clients know about the restrictions. All of them will resent them to one degree or another. It will be a major inconvenience. But the inconvenience of secret software has been far worse. How often have you encountered the situation where you need a bug fixed, a feature documented, or an add-on written and the vendor refuses to allow you to do it, or to do it himself? How can really quality software evolve in the absence of exchange of ideas, fixes, etc.? DEC, IBM, Bellcore, AT&T feel inconvenienced because the freerighting will mean they are no longer able to inconvenience others. To remove the inconvenience is to remove the entire purpose of freerighting. -- Jeffrey Kegler, President, Algorists, jeffrey@algor2.UU.NET or uunet!algor2!jeffrey 1762 Wainwright DR, Reston VA 22090