🚀 go-pugleaf

  From: mike@stolaf.edu (Mike Haertel)

| If you don't agree with our distribution policies, instead of complaining
| about it why don't you write some software of your own and distribute it
| under the policies that you would like to see?  That's what we did; we
| didn't waste our time asking proprietary software houses to please give
| us copies of their stuff for free.
---
Right, this is the "If you complain about our philosophy, you're
whining, if we complain about other people's philosophy, we're fighting
the good fight" argument.
---
| Since you're such a fan of Adam Smith, you should realize that there
| is no such thing as a free lunch.  If we gave our software away in
| the way that you advocate, and you subsequently made a proprietary
| modification and sold it for lots of $$$, then we would be giving you
| a free lunch at our (and our user community's) expense.
---
Right.  This argument continues to make no sense.  The FSF's
component of the package continues to be available free and in source
form to anyone who wants it without the proprietary modification.
This is not a free lunch.  If the price charged is out of line with the
amount of work involved in the enhancement, other people will do the
enhancement instead of buying it.
---
| We don't believe that software should be used as a means of coercing others.
| And we force nobody to make modifications of our software and give them to
| us; but we forbid anybody to use our software as part of a means of coercing
| others.
---
This is sophistry -- "do things our way and you can use our products as
a base for free" is exactly the same as "Pay us some money and you can
use our product as your base without regard to our philosophy."
Coercion for political ends is equivalent to coercion for economic ends.
---
| You sound like one of many who just wants to use our software, and
| doesn't give a damn about whether or not there is a large body of
| freely distributable software, as long as you can get something
| you can use *now*.  You can criticize us all you like, but our
| priorities are not the same as yours, nor is there any particular
| reason they should be.  Our current policy seems to be fulfilling
| our goals; we would change it if it wasn't.
---
First off, I don't think your characterization of the original note fits
the words that it contains, which didn't sound like whining or a request
for a handout, but as a straightforward argument that your actions don't
match your words.  Second of all, your sentence "You can criticize us
all you like" leaves off the consequent that your actions imply "but if
you do, we and everyone who likes us will make fun of you and accuse you
of being a freeloader and treat you like a jerk, because we're noble and
you're not."

scott

---
By the way, I personally have sometimes posted things I did on the net or
made them available to people who reported problems they would help and
I have reported bugs with fixes to FSF and other providers of free
software.  Furthermore, Motorola has provided FSF software on occasion
to customers and has always (in the cases I am aware of) either provided
source or made it available, both the original GNU code and our fixes
for our hardware.  We also are providing bug fixes to the X Consortium
and out other software suppliers.

Not only am I not asking for a free lunch, I'm not even asking for FSF
to change its policy; I am only pointing to what I believe to be
hypocrisy in that policy.

--
scott preece
motorola/mcd urbana design center	1101 e. university, urbana, il   61801
uucp:	uunet!uiucuxc!udc!preece,	 arpa:	preece@urbana.mcd.mot.com