🚀 go-pugleaf

   Date: 27 Mar 90 06:37:31 GMT
   From: utility@quiche.cs.mcgill.ca (Ronald BODKIN)

   In article <970010@gore.com> jacob@gore.com (Jacob Gore) writes:
   >Yes.  And if the management of _your_ company can see past their noses,
   >they'd realize that it still makes sense, because other people (and
   >companies) enhanced software for _your_ company.
	   This is "highly illogical".[...]	   I can tell you, I would
   not be impressed by the management of a company that gave software or
   enhancements to competitors.

I guess you don't think too highly of companies like Intel, NeXT,
Motorola, IBM, Sun, DEC, and DG who ship free software as system
utilities (some of them even as the standard compiler or debugger).
Fortunately Apple is still refusing to share anything, so we can
determine empirically which works better...

   >I don't think competitive companies will sit and wait for somebody else to
   >port or custom-improve GNU for their iron.  If anything, the problem will
   >be merging the improvements that will be coming in from all directions.
	   For some, small and localized, enhancements sure.  But no one in
   their right mind would make an enormous enhancement if the investment
   didn't work.

By your argument then, since companies are making such investments
perhaps they are deciding that such a strategy can work?

	   I must admit that I find FSF's philosophy to be essentially
   flawed, in its opposition to property rights. [description of Labor
   theory of value deleted]

You presume all rights to property belong to the producer.
Essentially, when I obtain a piece of software I am enjoined from
using it in various ways by its creator, unless it's totally PD.
However car producers have been repeatedly denied the ability to
prevent customers from servicing cars themselves, or to require that
customers go to particular service providers.  Why should software
consumers be required to do what the car consumers can?

							   As far as the
   FSF are concerned, I don't have a problem with their own desire to
   create shared software (so long as they don't try to strip property
   rights from those who do not wish to share their own software)...

They make no effort to do this.  You can use their code under their
license conditions, or not at all.  What could be fairer, by your own
definitions?

			 However, if GNU is to become a standard, it
   will need to have plenty of flexibility.

What could be more flexible than supplying the source code?

Seems to me the market is making a determination, regardless of
ANYONE'S ideology.  So where's the beef?