🚀 go-pugleaf

Apple's look and feel lawsuit attacks the freedom of programmers
generally.  Today's suit has just two defendants, but indirectly it
attacks all of us.

You appear to work at Apple.  Whether or not you personally support
the lawsuit, to help you install GCC on a machine at your office (at
Apple, it would seem) would be directly helping Apple business.  I
sometimes do favors for strangers, but not for strangers like Apple
that are trying to hurt me.  I hope other readers feel the same.

I am sending this message because (1) perhaps you personally don't
realize what a bad thing your employer is doing, and (2) perhaps some
of the other readers don't realize either.

Perhaps you personally don't approve of Apple's lawsuit.  If so, you
can show you really mean it by starting a political discussion of
whether it is unethical and whether Apple is morally obligated to stop
it.  This requires some courage--management will order you to stop,
and you will have to refuse on the grounds that everyone has a duty to
consider an issue of conscience--but showing courage is what can
demonstrate that people should not blame you for what Apple does.


Those readers who think they are allowed to write programs and won't
get sued for doing so, should read the information published by the
LPF about the danger of monopolies in software.  Then, if they'd like
something to be done about the problem, they can join the LPF.

The League for Programming Freedom is an organization that works to
protect programmers' freedom to write software, opposing enforced
monopolies such as Apple wants to create.  The LPF is not a free
software organization and is not related to the GNU project.

More information about the LPF is available in the directory doc/lpf
on ftp.uu.net.  To contact the LPF, send mail to lpf@uunet.uu.net.

You too can join the LPF; some Apple employees are already members.