🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Dec.8.01.55.19.1989.10692@elbereth.rutgers.edu> bschwart@elbereth.rutgers.edu (some great stormfowl, whenever he has walked his while) writes:
|
|What you lose is some control over the people using your code.
|The FSF seeks more control over its "customers" than pleases me.
|I am reminded of how the Federal Government "took over" the United
|States--by saying, "If you want Federal funds, you will have to sign over
|your autonomy."  Well, I'm a sharer, but I don't rightly appreciate
|being preached to when I share, particularly if I lose some of my
|autonomy.  To "share" code with the FSF isn't really sharing at all,
|but more of a barter.  You get the code, and FSF gets your agreement
|about how you will distribute that code, even if it is just "getopt."
|At least that's the principle.

Barry puts it ever so more eloquently than I could.

Also, since the company paying my wages delivers *turnkey* solutions
to people who *dont want to know anything* about unix, computers, etc,
the extra overhead of documentation, full of computerese, and heavily
involving Yet Another Corporate Lawyer. This is just going to annoy
cutomers, who are going to read it, scratch their heads, and then run
it by their MIS and legal groups, who will then take 3 months to decide
to recommend they need to get this gnu stuff (or maybe to stay away
from all this "public domain stuff - it's full of viruses").

The world is NOT mostly hackers, or even software engineers. It is mostly
full of people who want to press a button or turn a knob and have something
happen, without even THINKING about the fact that there's a computer
involved.

-Miles O'Neal
{yr fave backbone here}!emory!stiatl!meo