Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!WHEATIES.AI.MIT.EDU!rms From: rms@WHEATIES.AI.MIT.EDU (Richard Stallman) Newsgroups: gnu.emacs Subject: ./etc/APPLE. No Free Software for Mac users. Message-ID: <8809260004.AA02196@sugar-bombs.ai.mit.edu> Date: 26 Sep 88 00:04:56 GMT References: <10172@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> Sender: daemon@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Distribution: gnu Organization: GNUs Not Usenet Lines: 51 Perhaps I might even want to become the exclusive disributor of the thing, to the great dismay of those who would like to benefit from my creative efforts. Too bad for them! In my opinion, the thing that makes creative efforts desirable is that people can benefit from them. I hope everyone who can make creative efforts will aim to benefit humanity rather than for so petty a goal as to "make a living" (a euphemism for "become a yuppie"). I hope that, if you ever make any creative efforts that are useful, you will do as I do: encourage people to benefit from them, and thus bring about the most possible benefit. To judge from the his message, though, it doesn't seem likely that Mr. Horton will do this. Instead, he is more likely to say, "Too bad for everyone but me!" Look at this sly liguistic subterfuge: On the contrary, Apple is trying to establish the limits of the rights of Apple Computer Company over their own products Since the subject of the discussion is a program that resembles a Macintosh and wasn't written by Apple, he has here *defined* such programs, no matter who writes them, as being "Apple's own products" (because only thus can this statement be about the subject at hand). In other words, he has implicitly presumed the truth of Apple's side in the controversy, while pretending to be neutral. It is only natural for a company which writes software for profit to want ... to find out more precisely what the legal definition of "copying" might be. Are we to believe that Apple is neutral as well? You don't think Apple is trying to influence the outcome? Apple's attempt to define programs that HP, or I, write as "Apple's own product" is something I am determined to fight. I am sad that Horton is on Apple's side. With such an ally, they will be hard to beat. But I won't surrender just yet. My previous message got two replies from people who wanted to help fund the amicus brief. If you are interested in this, the person organizing it is well!rogue@lll-crg.arpa. I have also spoken with the lawyer defending Paperback Software against Lotus. He is looking for people who know the details of the history of the development of spreadsheets and can testify about them. Send me mail if you think you can help.