Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!husc6!wjh12!maynard!campbell From: campbell@maynard.BSW.COM (Larry Campbell) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: A counter-example for those who would eliminate PC binaries Message-ID: <1095@maynard.BSW.COM> Date: 10 Jul 88 02:26:06 GMT References: <708@amelia.nas.nasa.gov> <264@octopus.UUCP> <8820@netsys.UUCP> <268@octopus.UUCP> <4273@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu> <173@xochitl.UUCP> Reply-To: campbell@maynard.UUCP (Larry Campbell) Organization: The Boston Software Works, Inc. Lines: 31 In article <173@xochitl.UUCP> bonzo@xochitl.UUCP (Matt Armstrong) writes: <>In article <4273@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu> faustus@ic.Berkeley.EDU (Wayne A. Christopher) writes: <>>Is it really too much to expect of netnews readers with PC's to have a <>>C compiler? <> <>Maybe. As a poor college student that [sic] has to buy food, pay rent, and put money <>into his car, I (and several friends like me) cannot afford to buy even <>Turbo C, much less the (God-knows-why) standard MS-C. Gimme a break. You can afford to spend 1000 bucks on a computer and can't afford 60 bucks for a compiler? <>Like maybe if the binary was going to be smaller than the source (in the case <>of most TSR's). I wish you anti-binary people would make up your minds about <>whether you're mad at the size of the postings in comp.binaries or the fact <>that they aren't source so you can't port them to UNIX. It's not the size that bothers me about binaries, it's the secrecy. Programs in binary form conceal their algorithms from you. They can also contain Trojan horses. They cannot be repaired or improved. And they cannot be ported. Source code has none of these disadvantages. 60 bucks for a GREAT compiler is a trivial price to pay to be able to use, repair, and improve free software. Notice that I didn't even mention the educational benefits of reading other people's source code, nor the ability to use portions of a package that is of little interest to you as a whole. -- Larry Campbell The Boston Software Works, Inc. Internet: campbell@bsw.com 120 Fulton Street, Boston MA 02109 uucp: {husc6,mirror,think}!maynard!campbell +1 617 367 6846