🚀 go-pugleaf

On ways of distributing free software johnston@me.udel.edu (Bill Johnston) writes:

>>> If you have a better idea, please share it;  we're interested.

To this tzs@stein.u.washington.edu (Tim Smith) replies:

>> How about the way X is distributed?

And zhu@athena.mit.edu (Erin Zhu), follows up with:

> Exceedingly good point.

> If I may quote from the X11R4 release notes:
  [deleted]

A lot of improvements to the MIT X code has never been merged back
into the free MIT distribution. For two reasons, I guess:
 1. It won't fit into the MIT code without large modifications that
    may affect other parts of the system.
 2. It hasn't been made available to the X consortium.

The FSF way at least seems to make more changes done by other parties
being made available to the users of freely available GNU software (me
among others).

Example:
 o I can use GCC (with all the newest improvements) on a Linux machine
   at home without paying for it.
 o I can't use Motif at home without paying for it (Then again: why
   would I want to...? :-). I would be surprised if there's *no* MIT
   code in the Motif toolkit.

- Steinar