EVERHART%ARISIA.decnet@CRDGW1.GE.COM (06/05/89)
In response to RMS' request, let me state my support for restricting Gnu project newsgroups' contents. FSF has made it quite clear that they (the people who do the lion's share of the work) are unhappy about information re Apple products appearing on the Gnu lists. Common courtesy should dictate that those desiring to talk about them take such talk elsewhere. If some want to act like children in this matter and insist on bringing such topics into the conversation [ever had a kid start talking about his playing with worms over dinner, for a mild example? :-) ] they need to be treated appropriately. The mildest form of adult response is telling them to kindly change the subject. This has been done. I for one hope that will suffice, as I prefer a technical forum and would regret to see effort spent in removing offensive material from the list. We are not talking fascism here...only simple adult courtesy. The current spate of lawsuits and other legal activities is unfortunately not limited to Apple, but one must start somewhere. I believe the threat is serious enough that any serious software professional needs to consider that HIS (her) code might be covered someday by the kind of legal action Apple has started. If we want to retain that freedom of expression which serves to provide us incomes, we need to oppose this kind of legalism. Folks are free to disagree, but it is impolite of them to insist upon disrupting an interchange designed for other purposes to express that disagreement. Take the flames to apple specific groups, please, if their participants are interested. Let's get the Gnu newsgroups back from this religious war and try to avoid imposing unwanted burdens on the FSF guys. Glenn Everhart Everhart%Arisia.decnet@crd.ge.com