🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <17302@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> chased@rbbb.Eng.Sun.COM (David Chase) writes:
>Third, I am troubled by the FSF's inability to respond to what I'll
>try to call "mass market specialized software" (sounds like an
>oxymoron, but I'll try to explain why it isn't).

I am troubled by peoples' perceptions of "FSF's inabilit[ies]".  The
FSF has the _ability_ to do almost anything _they_ want.  They do not
always have the _desire_ to do anything _you_ want.

The fact that the FSF has made choices on where to spend resources is
commendable.  I would rather have a full compiler, editor and utilities
than half a dozen unfinished projects.

The fact is that all these nifty applications require a windowing system.
RMS was planning on writing a windowing system until X came along.  Thus the
FSF was willing to respond to a need.  Now the *free* X applications are
growing without any FSF programmers required.  This is good.

People continue to claim things that simply are not true.  People say
things like "inability to respond" or "Show me a PD...expert system"
or "Show me a PD...CAD system" or "Show me a PD...something like Mathematica."
These people refuse to acknowledge (or just don't know about) things like:

	sc (a PD UNIX spreadsheet)
	oleo (the FSF spreadsheet - X11 interface planned)
	xfig (an X11 drawing program)
	andrew (an X11 multimedia kit - includes WYSIWYG editing)
	RHETORICAL (planning ai software)
	PROTOS (knowledge acquisition ai software)
	DANCAD3D (a PC CAD system - no source)
	pcb (a printed circuit board router)
	magic (a VLSI design tool)
	JACAL (a symbolic math program)
	Solve (a PD Mac Mathematical analysis program - no source)
	
It is true that most of these are not public domain (PD) but they are
free and most include source.

>Who pays for efficient word processors with well-designed GUIs and
>tastefully presented bells and whistles?

The people who want them.  The rest of use can use groff and TeX and
psroff and dvips and ghostscript and xdvi and xproof and ....

>Forming a large enough consortium to distribute the price/programming
>effort is also not a practical proposition, since I'd expect at least
>5000 people would be needed to get the price sufficiently low.

Gee, people can only afford $10 each?  I could find a number of programmers
who could produce an X11 based WYSIWYG word processor in under a year for
that sort of pay ($50,000).  I could find a number of graduate students who
could produce the same thing for about $10,000.  I might even be able to find
a few undergrad students who could produce the same thing for about $2,000.
This is about the same price Sun is charging for a single copy of a C compiler
with no support so I figure most businesses could afford $2,000.  Even a small
school might be able to afford funding such a project.

Too many people seem to be into instant gratification.  If you are unwilling
to help don't complain if there is no GNU tool to do what you want.
The GNU system is a community project.  Once the FSF has a complete operating
system to do development on (rather than trying to help support many different
flavors) we may start to see all the nice "mass market specialized software"
but until that time, FSF is doing what they set out to do and trying to say
that this is an "inability" to produce packages is completely misleading.

Aydin Edguer