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