🚀 go-pugleaf

Now look:

I have followed the gnu project for some time, and do like (and, I admit, use )
the products that you have created. However, enough is enough. The PRINCIPLES 
upon which the gnu project was formed are quite harmful to the software industry
and software programmers in general.

	Now I realize I am not going to change your mind, but listen:

	You are doing the equivalent to what the Japanese microchip industry
did to the United States counterpart: dumping. Every time you create a software
product, and give it out -- free -- to the public, some private software 
developer is taking the brunt of it. 
	A software developer -- in the attempt to make a living -- creates a 
software program. In order for him to subsist, he HAS to charge a considerable
fee to pay for his time and effort in developing the product.
	Now YOU develop similar software for free. Which software would you 
pick as a consumer? A: Joe Schmoe's word processor -- 129.95 or B: Richard 
Stallman's super-duper gnu processor -- GRATIS. The choice is easy (as far
as the consumer is concerned, and Joe Schmoe, software developer,  
gets it directly in the teeth. 

	Aha -- but you say -- the development of free software stimulates the 
use of tools for other programmers to use in the future, to build off what 
you develop... WRONG.
	Your software gets people in VERY bad habits. They learn that what 
'they get off the net is free'	and 'why should we pay money for software? We'll
just wait until the gnu group, or some shareware group does it for free!'. I 
know this first hand, because gradually, people are 'coming around' to this 
way of thinking.

	All of the above is sad news for the future software developer. Why
ON EARTH spend 20,000+ on a college education, if the market that you are going
to go into is being deliberately sabatoged at every turn by some person who
-- out of misguided loyalties -- is periodically dumping products onto the 
market. I am one these folks, and sorry to say, I do not feel that I am going
to have the security of an academic umbrella to pay the bills.


Hey -- if you want to discuss any of the points above, just mail me. Flames are
not allowed -- I feel quite seriously about this issue, and am willing to take
all callers in turn.

Cheers,

John

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John Drexler			'Gentelmen-- you can't fight in here....	
tyrell@mermaid.micro.umn.edu	 This is the WAR ROOM! ' -- Peter Sellers
CSci Undergrad, University of Minnesota
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