🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <10288@chaph.usc.edu>, ajayshah@aludra.usc.edu (Ajay Shah) writes:
|>I'm new to this newsgroup, but this posting really left me
|>chilled.  DEC comes across as a real Great Satan!
|>
|>This is what computing was supposed to be in _1984_.  Thank god 
|>for the Free World, defined as the world minus these nazi
|>sentiments.
|>
|>But really; are these guys stupid or something?  Apple couldn't
|>have been anything today without support from a million hackers:
|>setting up such a public image is commercial suicide to Apple.
|>Ditto with DEC and IBM.
|>
No, they are not stupid, nor, if the truth were told, is their attitude
commerical suicide. IBM & DEC are the two largest US computer firms and
Apple is no small player. Their current status depends not on "support
from a million hackers", but the evaluations of users, most of whom
(surprise, surprise!) are NOT programmers and don't give a damn about
openess. Their concern is - will it run my software in a cost effective
manner. That software is most likely to be canned - either off the shelf
or contracted from a third party. 

BTW, I suspect that if you looked at most of your software licenses, you
will find that they contain the same restrict on disassembly - the Sun &
HP ones I have do. 
                              
Richard Neitzel thor@thor.atd.ucar.edu	     	Torren med sitt skjegg
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