🚀 go-pugleaf

From article <36919@usc.edu>, by ajayshah@alhena.usc.edu (Ajay Shah):
> In article <1991Oct28.165132.8105@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> huntley@copper.ucs.indiana.edu (Haydn Huntley) writes:
>> [...]
>>Question 2:  It is more evil for a company to copyright their UI than
>>for other companies to patent algorithms (some of which they didn't
>>even invent!)?  I think that patenting algorithms is *worse* than
>>copyrighting a UI, because it is easy to tell when you are making a UI
>>which is just like someone else's, and it it not nearly so easy to
>>know if you are unknowingly infringing on someone's algorithm patent.
>>Because of this, why doesn't the FSF/LPF boycott all of the companies
>>which are patenting algorithms?
> I think you are right; that a company which send a notice to
> another saying "I own bubblesort; pay up or get sued" is truly scum.  
> (Note there are companies which own patents but are not doing the
> above).  I think it's hard attacking a broad spectrum of
> companies on their competitive practices.  The Apple boycott is
> identifiable, visible and hopefully has an impact.  It certainly
> serves to reduce the support of the hacker community for Apple.
> Hopefully in the future, we will be able to do better.

Sure, it's visible and identifiable. However, it serves no purpose except
as a publicity stunt for the LPF. First of all, the Mac was never a hacker's
machine anyway, it's a *user's* machine. I know, I'm a programming addict,
and I know Mac software is a bitch to write.
Why weren't the LPF urging a boycott of AT&T when they suddenly decided they
owned some vital patent, and started demanding license payments for X?
Whenever the Apple boycott is defended, people point out that it's visible
and all that, and when the LPF's decision not to sanction AT&T is defended,
we hear the good ol' argument that "you can't get them all anyway".

> [...]
> 
>>I'm not 100% for Apple, but I've done enough work for IBM and
>>Microsoft that I've decided that no company is perfectly wonderful,
>>and I do like many things about the Mac OS.  My present opinion of the
>>FSF/LPF boycott is that it is a little bit arbitrary, and therefore it
>>doesn't make all that much sense.  I'd just rather that we tried to
>>write good alternative software, rather than worrying about how we
>>might be at legal crosspurposes several years from now, when we
>>actually have a GNU OS!
> I think it's not going to be several years from now; it's going
> to be a lot sooner than that!
> Yes, the boycott is ``a little arbitrary''.  But we can't be
> perfect, and we can't be completely callous, and we can't each of
> us go off into different directions.  So I think we are doing
> quite well right now.

Sure you're not completely callous. You decide to vilify and boycott Apple,
one of the very few companies that has brought some real innovation to the
industry, because:
 - Apple is a big, visible company, and you get a nice "mouse that roared"
   effect this way
 - the Mac is no hacker's machine, so you won't antagonize too many hackers
   with this boycott, and you need those hackers to contribute their efforts
   to the FSF
In this thread, Apple has been likened to terrorists, the assumption being
that helping Apple (by buying their products) is like supporting terrorists
in producing a net negative result for the greater community.
This is plain nonsense. As is pointed out above, the massive sales of MS-DOS
machines have hurt the industry enormously, by saddling the best-selling
hardware platform with a laughable excuse for an operating system. Yet no
one points the finger at Microsoft for this.
I would say Apple hurt no one in making the Mac GUI. Quite the contrary,
they did very many people a big favour by making a GUI-based machine
affordable for the first time. I say they deserve a medal.

 - Thomas (thomas@duteca.et.tudelft.nl)