🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <9104292009.AA01975@mole.gnu.ai.mit.edu> rms@GNU.AI.MIT.EDU (Richard Stallman) writes:

   We are still free to do certain things.  We are free to support GCC on
   the Macintosh if we want.  But, supposing we do, and supposing the
   users love it and flock to it, that won't do anything to protect our
   freedom to write a desktop system.  Even if we convince lots of Mac
   users that a free compiler is wonderful, it won't influence Sculley.

   The GNU system must have all the features users expect in a system,
   including a desktop, in order to succeed.  If any important component
   is made illegal, the GNU project fails, and all the work done on it
   becomes a waste.

Well, I don't care too much for Apple's policies in the Sculley era,
either, but neither can I support the boycott, and for many reasons,
most relatively minor, but one I think very important.

First (of the minor reasons), I can't afford to.  My only personal
computer is an old Mac Plus, and it's used for everything from my
wife's quilting newsletters and recycling committee work to the
scoring of music.  The hardware cost is incidental.  Despite making a
very good salary, I can't afford the thousands of dollars' worth of
software that would be required to get back to the current level of
functionality.  The house needs a new roof!

Second (slightly increasing importance), I don't know of an acceptable
alternative.  A person who refuses to learn to drive cars with manual
transmissions as long as automatics exist is never going to tolerate a
Unix system (even with Motif or NeWS).  My wife would go right out and
buy the Mac back, and the house would remain unroofed.

Third, I'm not at all sure I want there to be another Unix variant,
even for free!!!  Instead of working on new models of computation, more
reliable programming methods, and new applications of computers, the
gurus of MIT and FSF seem dedicated to a 50% better compiler for some
useful but rather aged languages, a 100% faster grep and awk, and
further confusion of the already hyper-saturated Unix market.  Maybe
eliminating the hypothetical "right to clone" would force these people
to more useful efforts.

Fourth, even if I agreed with all the LPF and EFF positions, I would
still consider environmental and humanitarian activism far more
deserving of my efforts than this quarrel.  The patent and copyright
mess will be straightened out when economics requires it (and it's a
purely economic issue, with no "ethical" component, and one that
touches only highly-educated and privileged people who could succeed
in a dozen other occupations if legally forbidden to write software).

Fifth (the important one), I feel that anyone who really believes in
information freedom must believe in presenting the political and
economic choices, and letting each person make up his or her own mind
how to act.  Thus I can only abhor the (ever politely worded)
abjurations from Richard Stallman not to post an address at AT&T for
correspondence concerning their claimed window system backing store
patent, for fear that someone might decide (horror of horrors) to use
it to agree to pay royalties.  Similarly, we are cautioned not to
publish to the "gnu." groups information on Macintosh ports of GNU
tools, thus totally confusing a public resource (the Usenet groups,
not any FSF mailing lists that may be interconnected to them -- that's
up to the FSF) and Mr. Stallman's free software concept with Mr.
Stallman's and the LPF's political agenda, and showing a remarkable
disrespect for other people's freedom of communication.

These are opinions, of course.  I would not attempt to prevent anyone
else from boycotting Apple if they feel that it is appropriate (though
the legal restrictions on *secondary* boycotts seem to make sense).

--

------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Lee Story (lee@wang.com) Wang Laboratories, Inc.
     (Boston and New Hampshire AMC, and Merrimack Valley Paddlers)
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