🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1991Jul25.153055.28579@alphalpha.com> nazgul@alphalpha.com (Kee Hinckley) writes:

>In article <RYAN.91Jul24180708@ra.cs.umb.edu> ryan@ra.cs.umb.edu (Daniel R. Guilderson) writes:
>>One thing that separates the so-called GNU ideal from the current
>>trend is that the GNU ideal makes room for software hoarders.  If you
>>don't like the way the GNU philosophy works, there is nothing
>>preventing you from developing proprietary software and distributing
>>that any way that makes your heart happy.  Whereas current software
>
>You've missed the point.  There's nothing keeping me from doing it,
>but it does mean that it is harder to do it.  The initial wall is
>harder to climb.  That's all.
>
>>them.  So why the sour attitude?  If it doesn't work, it doesn't work.
>>On the otherhand, so far it has been working pretty well.
>
>You missed that point to.  It's worked well for development tools and
>(somewhat less so) for end-user tools aimed at developers.  It has not
>worked in one single case for dumb end-user tools.  Show me a single
>GNU-licensed product that is popular outside of the development community.

Now this brings up something that's been confusing me and seems quite
relevant to this discussion.  Isn't the main point of GNU software to
make development tools for software developers?  Isn't the main
philosophy of the FSF and LPF motivated by the desire to make it
easier for people to develop software (by providing better, cheaper
development tools, and less restrictions and hassles due to patents
and copyrights and such)?  It seems less aimed at end-users, who won't
be developing or modifying their own software (I don't mean that this
is unfair to end-users, just that they don't have the same needs as
developers).

If this is so, then that explains why there haven't been many GNU
end-user products.  And it also affects drastically the arguments
(certainly those presented so far) that say that GNU-like free
software creates its own kind of monopoly.

-- 
Milt Epstein
Department of Computer Science
University of Illinois
epstein@cs.uiuc.edu