🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991Feb1.025429.381104@locus.com> geoff@ITcorp.com (Geoff Kuenning) writes:
>I find it interesting that these discussions never seem to take place without
>the use of loaded terminology from the FSF types.  People who want to charge
>money for software are "hoarders".  People who want to earn more money than
>the poster personally finds appropriate are "greedy".  Give me a break.

Anyone who equates "hoarders" with "sellers" completely misunderstands the
issues.  Charging for software is not the same as hoarding.  Indeed, the
FSF charges $200 for the GNU Emacs tape.

Hoarding is when you restrict the users from using the software in
reasonable ways.  This includes preventing them from reading or modifying
the source.  Can a car manufacturer prohibit you from looking under the
hood or performing your own tune-ups?  Why then can a software manufacturer
do this?

Stallman also believes that hoarding includes disallowing redistribution of
software, and I'm less comfortable with this, although I acknowledge his
right to believe it and to allow it for his organization's software.  To
me, it makes sense that the author of a program should be compensated in
proportion to the popularity of the software.  Stallman believes that
programming should be compensated out of government funds, and programmers
should earn additional money by providing services (e.g. consulting,
software support, or simply distributing tapes).

I'm also not sure where RMS stands on the issue of trade secrets.  For
instance, my company doesn't release the source to our microcode, because
details about some of the secret aspects of our hardware design may be
inferred from the firmware that controls it.
--
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar