rms@AI.MIT.EDU (06/06/89)
Person one: >However, on the same foot, should IBM products be support? They've >engaged in dubious pricing practices in the past, although that's >largely behind them now. Person two: Who wants to support FSF when they might quit supporting your machine at any time?... ALL companies have done things that are contrary to the goals of FSF. Now here is my explanation of what is going on in these messages. The background is that I said that one company is doing something egregious, much more threatening than the unethical things all the rest do; therefore, I will boycott it. Then person one said that HE wasn't convinced that company's action was worse than the unethical activities of other companies. So he wasn't sure HE would chose to boycott that one and not the others. Then person two assumed, from this, that I am likely to boycott any and all companies that do something I consider unethical. (Note that this contradicts what I said on the issue.) And he proceeded to get bent out of shape. This kind of thing happens all too often. Whenever anyone speculates about what the FSF might do, or about what I might think, someone else takes the speculation as fact, and takes off from there. As a result, much of the discussion on info-gcc accomplishes nothing except to waste my time and mislead the readers. Who wants to support FSF when they might quit supporting your machine at any time? It is true we might quit supporting anything at any time. However, it is not true that this is related especially to politics. The FSF has never promised the public to support anything in particular. And we don't plan to make such promises. Every one of our programs carries a disclaimer saying so in no uncertain terms. There are dozens of reasons, mostly technical, why we might refuse to support something. There are machines already in the distribution for which we won't lift a finger to investigate a problem. There are features other people have implemented which we aren't boycotting but refuse to spend time to look at. Is this a reason not to support GNU? Perhaps for some of you it is. But for most of you it is overreacting. One of the virtues of free software is that you aren't dependent on any single organization for maintenance. If the FSF won't give you the support you want, you can call up someone on the service list. By contrast, if a commercial supplier goes bankrupt, you are completely helpless.