🚀 go-pugleaf

According to vinsci@brando.uwasa.fi (Leonard Norrgard):
>Unfortunately, I have to use a hoarded X display every day at work.
>The makers of it won't give us sources so we could fix the bugs
>ourselves.  Clearly, the X way of distribution is not working...

Interesting definition of "working", that.  X is only the most widely
used window system in the world.  It is such due in part to fixes and
other contributions from many dedicated and talented people.

If X were a GPL product, it would be in exactly the same (good but not
great) condition as the publically available X of today.  After all,
those who contribute patches to GPL products usually do not do so out
of GPL-based coercion; they do so because they like to share.  (Or do
you think that I, who share my GCC patches, transmogrify into an evil
hoarder at the moment that I type "cd /usr/src/X"?)

Were X to have been a GPL product from the beginning, the public
minded people who do contribute fixes would have continued to do so.
The only difference would be a loss: commercial products would never
have been, since GPL programs just don't provide the revenue stream.

You may not like the commercial X products, but don't imagine that a
GPL'd X would have made a better commercial X for you to hack.  No way.

>> The FSF didn't invent free redistribution, it corrupted it.
>
>Clearly the FSF distribution scheme is working to the benefit of both
>the programmers and the user society...

You can't measure benefit without considering possible greater benefit
of alternatives.  I see PD (and copyrighted-but-really-free, a la X,
which is practically the same thing) as an alternative that produces a
greater net benefit than the GPL.
-- 
Chip Salzenberg at Teltronics/TCT  <chip@tct.com>, <73717.366@compuserve.com>
  "you make me want to break the laws of time and space / you make me
   want to eat pork / you make me want to staple bagels to my face /
   and remove them with a pitchfork" -- Weird Al Yankovic, "You Make Me"