🚀 go-pugleaf

The issue of whether software should be free or restricted should not
be a moral or ethical issue, but simply a pragmatic one.  Software
propagates in two modes, free dissemination and commercial sale.  Each
method has its strengths and weaknesses.

The free dissemination has the big advantage of being able to
propagate at fantastic rates across networks like this one.  It
generally suffers (FSF excepted) from a tendancy to disorganized and
uncoordinated growth leading to multitudes of incompatible copies
each with it's particular strengths, but impossible to recombine
with the other strains.

Commercial sale has the big advantage of being immediately rewarding
financially, thus allowing for the coordinated efforts of large groups
of programmers to produce code conforming to a unified concept and adhering
to compatability criteria.  It suffers from the endless assaults of 
pirates, which requires ever more ingenious defense mechanisms which 
always serve to make the software less useful and practical.  It also
suffers from the necessity to monitor and account for usage in order to
levy the proper fees, and it cannot be incorporated into other commercial
code without passing along all the copyright encumberances of the component
parts.

Each of these methods of software propagation have their own best
niches, and I am sure that all of us have at one time or another made
use of each at the proper place and time.  There is a natural balance
between the two- if it were not for free software, the price of the
commercial stuff would reach astronomical proportions and they would
not be compelled by competition to reach such pinacles of excellence.
On the other hand, if it were not for the commercial stuff, there
would be no examples of large unified systems to act as an inspiration
to the rest of us, to show us what can be achieved, and to raise our
standards of expectation for software friendliness.  There would also
be no jobs for a lot of us!  So I say, let each mode do it's own best
thing, and "vive la difference!"