🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1990Oct2.222058.1752@midway.uchicago.edu> goer@quads.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz) writes:
>Whether or not you agree with the GNU philosophy, it just doesn't
>make sense to sneer at the countless man-hours they have put
>into their fine products - and this basically either for altruistic
>reasons, devotion to a non self-serving cause, or else for the pure
>love of their work.

My admiration is reserved for those who make their programs truly free, without
the political claptrap associated with Stallman's utopia, and without unobvious
gotchas. Examples abound on the net: Larry Wall's rn, patch, and perl; Henry
Spencer and Geoff Collyer's Cnews; and Phil Karn's KA9Q TCP/IP package spring
immediately to mind. The FSF is an aberration on the net, and it galls me to
no end to see them constantly held up as altruistic saints. The emperor has no
clothes, folks! The FSF has a specific political agenda, and their software and
licensing terms serve that agenda. Anything else is whitewash.

>If you think that this is worse than commercialism, and ought to
>be banned from the net, then it looks - at least to me - as though
>your value-system is upside down.

It is worse than commercialism - for it is commercialism, and a political
agenda, hiding behind a false label.


-- 
Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL | Never ascribe to malice that which can
jmaynard@thesis1.hsch.utexas.edu  | adequately be explained by stupidity.
"It's a hardware bug!" "It's a    +---------------------------------------
software bug!" "It's two...two...two bugs in one!" - _Engineer's Rap_