🚀 go-pugleaf

hjb@netcom.com (Hwa-Jin Bae) writes:

>anyway, it's amazing to hear this from a cygnus person.

Cygnus does not impose an ideological purity test on its employees.
(I doubt there is anybody at Cygnus who is opposed to free software,
but there are certainly a number of people who don't care about it).

>>This is a true statement.  So what?  For example, we are against
>>putting up our entire product line for anonymous ftp, source code,
>>binaries and all as it will swamp our network link, consume more disk,
>>more human resources, increase the number of people that expect
>>support from us for free...  While it might be nice to do so, and I
>>agree with you there, the money is better spent fixing more bugs in
>>free software like gcc, g++ and gdb.  Wouldn't you agree?

>to hear that from a cygnus person in public is not at all what i expected.
>this is pretty bad.  no, i do not agree that the money is better spent
>fixing more bugs.  i believe that it is more important to make one's work
>on GNU software available to all.  the motivation behind two goals (yours
>and mine) are different.  one (yours) is bottom-line approach, where the
>goal is less important than every day reality of running a company that
>requires revnue.  the other (mine) is less practical, yet more in tune with
>the goal.   i believe that it is wrong to compromise your goals as such.

You really think that Cygnus should spend time making software more
readily available rather than fixing it?  I wonder how many people
agree with you?  After all, even if you continue to believe that
Cygnus is hoarding software to make a profit on it (which I assert it
is not), Cygnus's work is available to all, indirectly, via Cygnus's
customers.  Every customer gets the same source code (barring code
which Cygnus has written under a non-disclosure agreement), and
Cygnus's low end prices are not completely out of reach.  There are,
obviously, no restrictions on what customers do with the source code
they receive from Cygnus (beyond the restrictions of the GPL).

I am an employee of Cygnus Support.  I do not speak for it.
-- 
Ian Taylor | ian@airs.com | First to identify quote wins free e-mail message:
``Let me state here a personal conviction that appears, right now, to be
  profoundly unfashionable; which is that a planned economy can be more
  productive - and more morally desirable - than one left to market forces.''