🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Jan12.225601.5092@alphalpha.com> nazgul@alphalpha.com (Kee Hinckley) writes:
>In article <GUMBY.92Jan10065057@Cygnus.COM> gumby@Cygnus.COM (David V. Wallace) writes:
>>   I think the major complaint that many people have with the GNU license
>>   is that it's having an adverse affect not on the amount commercial
>>   software (it's intention) but rather on the amount of unencumbered
>>   software.  In other words, most GNU software would have been released
>>   for general use had the GNU license not existed.  It wouldn't have
>>   been sold.
>>
>>Do you have any evidence for this?
>
>If I had concrete evidence I would have said "I know", not "I think".

   You speculate an awful lot for someone who has't got any concrete
evidence. 

>I don't know of any commercial software companies which have switched
>to using the GPL, they've simply avoided using any GPL'd code in their
>software.  I don't know if the LGPL will change this, I'd be happy to
>hear of examples.  On the other side it's hard to tell what any author
>would or would not have done, unless someone wants to do a survey of
>all authors who put their code under GPL.

>Everyone points to Cygnus, but I haven't heard that Cygnus is selling
>binary-only (source on request of course) distributions of GNU software
>to end-users.  And one example does not an industry make.

   Motorola recently announced the availability of a C language tool kit
for its DSP56000/1 digital signal processor.  The tool kit contains a
cross compiler adapted from GCC and a port of GDB.  Source code for the
system is available from Motorola under the terms of the GPL.

   To my knowledge, gcc is also used by NeXT and by Commodore for its Amiga
SVR4 system.  4.4BSD uses gcc as the standard compiler.

   Cygnus actually maintains a lot of GNU software, including GDB and other
related tools.  

   A group connected with the commercial personal computer network in Japan
is writing and distributing a hardware design and associated software
that uses a MIPS-architecture CPU.  To my knowledge, the OS will be GPLed. 

   I don't think it's fair to criticize something that's only a few years
old (that does practically no commercial-style advertising besides) as
being a failure.  In my experience, the amount of free software seems to be
increasing, GPLed or otherwise. 

   Happy hacking.

---
Noah Friedman
friedman@prep.ai.mit.edu