🚀 go-pugleaf

by now i must be in everyone's kill file.  just as well.  i have communicated
with RMS with the following email.  the following is a copy of my email to
him, and his response was "I'm going to talk with Cygnus management
privately about some of what you've told me."  that is good for me for now.

i am tired of typing replies to personal attacks.  i see no point in
continuing this discussion, since it seems clear that cygnus people who
post here and i fundamentally disagree on the nature of free software.
i realize that i may be wrong.  but at this time, i'm also sure that i am
right.  that is, nobody has convinced me otherwise.  we'll see who's right
in about ten years from now.

here's a copy of my email to RMS.

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Hello.

I think that you should take a look at the UUNET-favoritism and Cygnus
related thread in gnu.misc.discuss.  I'm sure you're busy with work,
so here's (hopefully) a brief summary.

Quotes are directly from Cygnus' literature. (as in, 
ftp.cygnus.com:/pub/Cygnus.info/products.services).

Cygnus claims that "Cygnus is officially recognized by the Free
Software Foundation as the maintainer of gdb, the g++ front end, etc."
which I assume to be (and seems to be) true.  They also embrace the
Free Software (what they call Sourceware) movement.

The inconsistency: "GNU tools downloaded from the Internet are
available 'as is'. They are not the same as the Cygnus GNU Toolset and
have not been through the same rigorous testing process."  So what
about the software that has been through testing?  They should also be
available, preferrably at the same time as they're shipped to their
customers.  However, this doesn't sound too bad.  Except also that
Cygnus consistenly has been advertising the fact that their customers
will get the stable, "engineered" GNU software, before the same
software is made available to non-customers.  This is against Free
Software, and GNU.  The fact that this is not enforce-able (all it
takes is one of their customers to simply put the release on FTP sites
as soon as it is received) is besides the point.  The fact that Cygnus
claims that they don't sell software, but just sell support seems
contradictory in this regard as well -- why then the delayed
distribution to favor their own customers?  It all seems against the
spirit to promote the free flow of information.

An organization such as Cygnus should know better.  It can do business
without having to resort to this type of marketing propaganda.  It
would better both for Cygnus as well as GNU/FSF community to
re-think this inconsistency.

I realize that you are not Cygnus.  But you are the main GNU/FSF
person.  Some words about the Cygnus' release policy might be of
interest to a lot of GNU users and FSF supporters.  As a long time
user and supporter of GNU and FSF, I would appreciate your opinion on
this matter.

Thank you.

Hwajin Bae
Peaceful Star Consulting
Oakland, California
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