🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <5w2V216w164w@mantis.co.uk> mathew@mantis.co.uk (CNEWS MUST DIE!) writes:
>Of course no graphical GNU tools exist. Until the Apple/Microsoft lawsuit is
>settled, nobody in the FSF knows what might and might not be covered by user
>interface copyright. There's no point producing a mouse, icons and menus
>version of GNU Emacs if Apple can prevent its distribution.

Sorry, I don't buy this.  For some reason, fear of an Apple lawsuit didn't
stop any of a number of groups of people from producing freely redistributable
graphics software: the Interviews project at Stanford, the X window system,
Sun's xview code (which they have made freely available), John Ousterhout's
"Tk" graphics toolkit, etc, etc.

If this were really the issue, FSF would be best advised to write something
really good, get a lot of people running it, and let Apple sue if they
dare.  But FSF apparently doesn't have staff or volunteers at present with
the time and talent to write hot graphics software; at this stage of
the game, they appear to be concentrating their efforts on the Gnu kernel
and version 2 of gcc.

If fear of lawsuits is a big consideration, since FSF has already committed
to X, they could build on top of Open Look, starting from the toolkit
made available by Sun.  Yes, it has serious flaws, but

	1) The source code is freely redistributable;
	2) Any look-and-feel lawsuit by Apple would have to target both
	   AT&T and Sun, the producers of Open Look.  These companies
	   can afford enough legal talent to present a formidable attack
	   against this whole nonsensical line of argument by Apple.


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Joe Buck
jbuck@janus.berkeley.edu	 {uunet,ucbvax}!janus.berkeley.edu!jbuck