dhosek@hmcvax.claremont.edu (Hosek, Donald A.) (08/31/90)
In article <9008301740.AA18499@jade.berkeley.edu>, DLV@CUNYVMS1.BITNET writes... [some comments about my mistakenly stating that the emTeX drivers only use PXL files.] >Many thanks to Eberhard >Mattes for making the results of his work available to the people! In my >opinion, your posting illustrates the bigger problem that TUG leadership >seems to have. TUG is closely associated with a few unscrupulous individuals >that peddle commercial implementations of TeX, your TUGBoat pushes these >commercial implementations in every issue, and practically never mentions >the existence of free, yet equally good, TeX implementations for MS-DOS, and >now you stoop to posting a falsehood in comp.text.tex to denigrate one of >the better free TeXs. Frankly, I am growing disgusted with TUG, and am >seriously considering not renewing my TUG membership next year. Dimitri, let me just say that I think that you're quite mistaken. I've already addressed the "you stoop to posting a falsehood" issue. Anyone who is familiar with the amount of time that I put into the maintenance and development of the Public Domain VMS TeX software would be a bit surprised to hear that I have a bias towards commercial implementations of TeX. Now as to the other items on your list, "TUGboat pushes these commercial implementations in every issue, and practically never mentions the existence of free, yet equally good, TeX implementations..." Dimitri, those pages at the back of TUGboat where the commercial software is pushed are advertisements. TUGboat isn't pushing those items, the developers are. According to the treasurer's report in TUGboat 10#3, advertising revenue accounted for $21,985 of TUG's income in 1988 and $37,000 in 1989. That's 1/3 to half the cost of TUGboat. Of course, we could cut out the advertising, boost TUG dues and those who do care about commercial TeX software for whatever reason would lose that information. As for TUGboat not pushing PD TeX software, yes, there are no full page advertisements for emTeX showing up, but that's not to say that the software doesn't get mentioned. Let's see, TUGboat 11#2 (the most recent issue I have) has little in the PC area, but there are three articles on mainframe TeX implementations (Data General, CMS and VMS). In the article "Resources Available to TeX Users", emTeX IS mentioned with a list of all the features of the package as it stood at that time. TUGboat 11#1 has an article on new items at Clarkson, a list of TeX resources including FTP sites and Jon Radel's service, an article, "Une version compl\`ete de TeX du domaine public pour compatibles PC: les 'deux disquettes GUT'" (the article is in French and describes a complete PD TeX system for PC compatibles on 2 disks (based on SBTeX and the Beebe drivers).) Yes, there could be more on public domain TeX implementations, but where are the articles? I KNOW that Barbara Beeton isn't turning articles away. I personally am guilty of this, in that I haven't had a copy of my column on device drivers printed in ages (if you like you can take measurements and see whether the portion devoted to public domain software is bigger than the commercial section. Any omissions in older versions of the lists are due to driver authors/users/developers not responding to my pleas for information.) I don't think that there is any grand conspiracy on the part of TUG and commercial drivers to supress public domain TeX. TUG has, in fact done a lot to promote it: for example, TUG has purchased (or is going to purchase soon, I'm not sure about the timing) a disk duplicating machine to be placed in Reston, VA to make Jon Radel's distribution of Public Domain software somewhat easier on him. That TUG can be run better, I do not doubt, but if no one says, "hey, can you do more about this and that" or if there is no one to do more about it, then it can't change. By the way, you referred earlier to "my TUGboat". It's not. I'm on the editorial committee, yes, but my influence goes little beyond my column and some (rare) editorial work (viz, in the time that I've had the title, exactly one article, Len Schwer's article on including Mac PostScript with LaTeX, has passed through my hands). You, Dimitri, have had almost as much influence on the contents of the journal in the last year as I have. I'm not on the board. My influence on the organization extends no further than my willingness to write letters to the board and stir up trouble over e-mail. You too can do this. -dh --- Don Hosek TeX, LaTeX, and Metafont support, consulting dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu installation and production work. dhosek@ymir.bitnet Free Estimates. uunet!jarthur!ymir Phone: 714-625-0147 finger dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu for more info