escher@apple.com (Mike Crawford) (12/22/89)
The discussion of Unipress selling Gosling Emacs as an example of restricting public domain code brought up a little peeve of mine. Its that the sellers of commercial competitors to free and public domain code get all the press in the industry, and present themselves as the only alternative. Becuase the FSF does not advertise, there are shops where no one has heard of GNU Emacs, and who pay good money for its cheap imitation. A few jobs ago I worked for a company that was not on the net and did not read the news. My employer was a miser who would not spare a dime for a decent tool. (I was on a Sun workstation, but that had preceeded him, and he was carrying on a program to migrate to the PC!) I read all the industry mags, Unix World, Sun Technology and so on, and when Unipress ran the ads that they were (approximately... twiddle quote?) RThe authorized distributor for EmacsS. This made me very sad, as I knew I would never get to use Emacs, though I knew it was just what I wanted in an editor. Fortunately a helpful soul gave me a GNU tape. Up until then I was not at all convinced that being a programmer was worthwhile. It was a temporary job until I found something better to do with my life. Reading the GNU Emacs code convinced me that there was something worthwhile that one could do as a programmer. When I got smart and got a new job, now as a contract programmer, my new client was using Unipress Emacs, and had extensively modified it, at their own expense, to do many things that were standard in GNU Emacs, like running a shell in a window. When they got Sun workstations, one of their programmers had to put a VT100 on his workstation serial port to do his editing, as this homebrew Gosmacs was hardcoded for it. They even had GNU Emacs online when I got there, but no one knew how to use it, and they kept on with the Unipress. Now, the FSF does not have a lot of money, but there are ways to advertise that would not cost them anything. For one thing, there are those Advertising Council ads, for the Heart Foundation and such, that magazines run for free. Now for my second subject: I am a contract programmer, and I am thinking of charging for support of GNU Emacs. I fully expect that I could make a good living. Someone posted a message here, that to write GNU software, one would have to be a consultant, or contract programmer, as if that was somehow undesirable. Well, I am a contract programmer, and I am making some killer ducats doing it! My idea is that I would advertise in Silicon Valley newspapers to install Emacs, X windows, whatever else is free or public domain, on clients computers for some reasonable charge. I would advertise that GNU Emacs is the better one, that it is free, and I would come install it for a charge. I would charge for modifications, to develop lisp libraries, to port to new hardware. I would abide by the GPL -- if the client were to distribute my work, they would have to distribute the code, I would post new code to the net and the GNU bug reporting address. I have been told that to charge for supporting GNU would be counter to their philosophy, but this does not seem to be the case to me -- and I would be a test of whether their philosophy could work in the cold, hard steel world of Silicon Valley. It is my impression, that may be wrong, that most software is written for internal use by the company that developed it. In many cases, they use it as an edge against their competitors, but often it is just to have some tool, like that hacked Gosmacs above, that they need just to get some job done. I think there is enough demand around for this sort of thing that I could charge for code written under the GPL. PS. I donUt think this is a stupid group. I think it is great that people are getting worked up over the Manifesto, and that there is much real discussion going on. I just wish people would be a little more rational in their RdebateS. They FSF is not a bunch of bloodthirsty revolutionaries. They are doing the sort of thing that universities have been doing for years. Lots of people write software that is publish under GPL-like licenses -- like Mach, and BSD (you can get the source to the parts that donUt have AT&T code, like most of the utilities.) Mike Crawford Oddball Enterprises 694 Nobel Drive Santa Cruz, CA 95060 oddball!mike@ucscc.ucsc.edu Consulting for: Apple Computer <- yes thatUs right! escher@apple.com These are my own opinions. No one else may have them.
tower@AI.MIT.EDU (Leonard H. Tower Jr.) (12/22/89)
Errors-To: gnu-misc-discuss-request@cis.ohio-state.edu Reply-To: gnu-misc-discuss@cis.ohio-state.edu Sender: gnu-misc-discuss-request@cis.ohio-state.edu Date: 21 Dec 89 19:34:34 GMT From: escher@apple.com (Mike Crawford) Organization: Apple Computer I have been told that to charge for supporting GNU would be counter to their philosophy, but this does not seem to be the case to me -- and I would be a test of whether their philosophy could work in the cold, hard steel world of Silicon Valley. FSF and GNUers have nothing against people making a living supporting GNU software. We even support it. Have a look at the file etc/SERVICE in the GNU Emacs distribution. Note that rms makes his livilihood supporting and creating free software (BTW, he is still a GNU volunteer, not on FSF payroll). enjoy -len