🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan11.032430.19184@husc3.harvard.edu> zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
(I think it's about time for Zeleny to join Farwell in my KILL file...)

>Huh? in what sense is the PD source not readily available?

1.  I create a PD program and pass it around to a few people (set A).
2.  One of these people (B) creates a binary from my source and gives
    it to another group of people (set C).

A is the set of people who have access to the source.  C is the set of
people who have access to the binary.  B = A\cap B = the set of people
who have the binary and the source.  The people in C - B don't have
access to the source, unless B chooses to give it to them.

>I shan't presume to speak for you or your programs, but for anyone
>*but* a skilled programmer, Emacs is *far* inferior to any generic
>(WYSIWYG, graphical) word processor.

Tell that to the graduate students and technical secretaries who use
it daily at this any many other locations around the world.

>[. . .]

>The difference is, no single, dedicated agency has ever tried to
>maintain and develop the PD extensions of X, TeX, or BSD.

Wrong.  In particular, MIT, Stanford and the University of Washington,
and UC Berkeley, respectively.

>What I have in mind may be imagined as a planned and
>coordinated counterpart to piecemeal PD software development currently
>undertaken by the US government and universities.

If the US government plans to develop *any* significant piece of
software, then they make sure that it was actually developed by
someone who can claim copyright in the work, so that they can then
turn around and charge lots of money for it.


-GAWollman

-- 
Garrett A. Wollman   | Shashish is simple, it's discreet, it's brief. ... 
wollman@emba.uvm.edu | Shashish is the bonding of hearts in spite of distance.
uvm-gen!wollman      | It is a bond more powerful than absence.  We like people
UVM disagrees.       | who like Shashish.  - Claude McKenzie + Florent Vollant