🚀 go-pugleaf

I'd like to address some of the things which Thomas Okken says.

thomas@duteca4.et.tudelft.nl (Thomas Okken) writes:
> 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".

  first, let's point out something - there is an *important*
distinction between sending someone a "vaguely threatening letter"
such as "pay up or get sued" and actually bringing a suit to court.
AT&T has *not* done the latter, though Apple has.  If AT&T *were* to
actually sue someone, I'd imagine that the FSF would organize a
boycott of AT&T - at least, I'd be urging them to.  If you were to
send out a letter to everyone saying that you were going to sue them
everytime they used your name in a message, I'd laugh (or worry,
depending on how dependent I am on using your name, whether or not I
think you have a case, whether or not I think you are serious, etc.,
etc.) - but if you actually sued someone, I'd be urging people to
*refuse* to carry your messages.

   after AT&T sent out the letter claiming that they would sue people
who didn't pay licensing fees for X-windows, people started collecting
"prior art" - and MIT's lawyers decided that there wasn't a case
anyway.  That's why no one seems to take AT&T's letter as a serious
threat.  However, Apple's suit is a *verifyable* threat - especially
given the way that jurisprudence has been going in our country for the
last 150 years or so... *ANY* ruling on the Apple suit other than
aquittal for the defenders and *outright ban* on claims such as Apple
has made has the potential to cause trouble for the rest of us.  If
AT&T were to bring someone to court, the same would be true of them.

> 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

     Apple has a large market share and is using techniques we don't
approve of in order to secure a *larger* market share.  It's *not*
acceptable to simply walk away and say "gosh, we tried..."  It's
*important* that we see this through to the end - and to *not* let a
decision in favor of Apple stop our movement.

>  - 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

     This is an unsubstantiated speculation - it's a nice rhetorical
point, but there's no meat there.  You've no way to _prove_ and I've
no way to _disprove_ that boycotting a company which produces a
"hacker's machine" would result in fewer efforts from users/owners of
those machines - this may become especially true as OSF/1 products
become available from the various vendors, and (hopefully) shortly
therafter the GNU-OS (herd) comes out.  Tools which will compile under
herd should port *nicely* to any MACH-based system - so a boycott of
DEC (say) theoretically would not affect those of us who run OSF/1
from DEC too much.

> 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.

  Indeed.  Quite a few people have pointed a finger at Microsoft for
many years now.  The fact that the FSF does not port to MS-DOS
machines is not the same as a boycott, but if people who own MS-DOS
machines weren't porting FSF applications, they wouldn't be there.
Also note that the first edition of the herd will run on 386 machines
- replacing the joke of an operating system that Microsoft sells.

> 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.

  Apple provided quite a few people (such as my girlfriend) with an
easy to use interface to computers - they also put enough weight
behind it to make it become *imperative* that other vendors supply it
as well.  For that they deserve thanks and congratulations.

   They then turn around and try to *prevent* other vendors from
providing the very thing which they made so *necessary* - the obvious
logical result being that only Apple's will have GUI's - and everyone
else will suffer.  For that they deserve to hang.

                    Jon "Iain" Boone
                  jb3o+@andrew.cmu.edu