🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1i8cgeINN8l6@shelley.u.washington.edu> tzs@stein.u.washington.edu (Tim Smith) writes:

>Michael.Norrish@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Michael Norrish) writes:
>>their use. Pick some 'conventional software companies', do they do
>>this? Does Microsoft have the source for Windows available for ftp at
>>their sites? Is Microsoft perhaps not a conventional software company?
>
>As a programmer, I find Microsoft source code as available to me as FSF
>source code.  That is, not at all.
>
>Compare two hypothetical situtations:
>
>Situtation 1: I take a job to write a program for a company.  I realize that
>something I need to do has been done in Microsoft Windows.  I can't use
>the Windows source, however, because Microsoft has not shown it to me.
>
>Situtation 2: I take a job to write a program for a company.  I realize that
>something I need to do has been done in GNU Emacs.  I can't use the Emacs
>source, however, because the program I am working on is proprietary.
>
>Looks the same to me.

Perhaps superficially, but they are not really the same.  And it
becomes clear when looking at the situations as you've described them:
In situation one, you can't use it because of another company's
policies; in situation 2, you can't use it because of your own
company's policies.

Another point is that since you have the GNU Emacs source, you can
look at the source to see how the piece you're interested in works, so
you can rewrite your own version if need be.

-- 
Milt Epstein
Department of Computer Science
University of Illinois
epstein@cs.uiuc.edu