tiemann@YAHI.STANFORD.EDU (Michael Tiemann) (05/31/89)
My damn tax dollars payed for your machines at MIT. [ ... ] Just think about it, and if you must make proprietary arguments about FSF, ground them in fact instead of fantasy. If you want to be fascist, that's up to you, but don't be fascist about things that *my* tax dollars are ultimately paying for. Let's get facts and fantasies straight here. Your tax dollars are a consequence of your income, which you derive from your job as a computer professional. The high demand for computer expertise is a consequence of the breadth and depth to which computers have become a part of our society. Computers may well have remained top-secret technology, built by the few for the few, but people at MIT brought them out of the closet and into the hands of the people--you and me. Were it not for the MIT hackers, computers would have remained toys of the military that paid for them. MIT opened up computing. They made it possible for us to play with, then to study, then to work computers. The portion of your taxes going to MIT are but a small fraction of the money you owe them for making your job possible. Let's not forget that connection. Michael
shap@polya.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan S. Shapiro) (05/31/89)
In article <8905310809.AA01988@yahi.stanford.edu> tiemann@lurch.stanford.edu writes: > > My damn tax dollars payed for your machines at MIT. >Let's get facts and fantasies straight here. Your tax dollars are a >consequence of your income, which you derive from your job as a >computer professional. [...] MIT opened up computing. They made >it possible for us to play with, then to study, then to work >computers. The portion of your taxes going to MIT are but a small >fraction of the money you owe them for making your job possible. >Let's not forget that connection. Whether this is "fact" is seriously debatable. MIT as an organization has done absolutely nothing of the sort. Certain individuals at MIT, acting on their own behalf, have done a tremendous amount of laudable work of the kind you describe. I have no objection to FSF being supported in part by my taxes, by way of DARPA, NSF, and other funding mechanisms facilities that payed for most of the machines and the supporting networks on which the FSF work is done. I think it is money well spent, if for no other reason than the fact that FSF has promoted some competition which has led to generally better compilers. What I do object to is when people use that revenue for the sort of fascist bullshit that our friend at tut and a few others have been engaging in. Kindly do that on your own dollars, not on mine and the supporting dollars of over a thousand companies across the US and the world that pay directly for the transmission of the newsgroups. Newsgroups and mailing lists cannot rationally be said to "belong" to a group that isn't the sole funder of the relevant newsgroup or mailing list. Jon
rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz) (05/31/89)
In <9600@polya.Stanford.EDU> shap@polya.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan S. Shapiro) writes: >Newsgroups and mailing lists cannot rationally be said to "belong" to >a group that isn't the sole funder of the relevant newsgroup or >mailing list. Yes they can. Perhaps not legally, but certainly by tradition. Cf., sun-spots/comp.sys.sun. "Sole funder"? Give me a break. /rich $alz -- Please send comp.sources.unix-related mail to rsalz@uunet.uu.net. Use a domain-based address or give alternate paths, or you may lose out.