Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!agate!labrea!decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!mcvax!hp4nl!botter!star.cs.vu.nl!ast@cs.vu.nl From: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: GNU Message-ID: <1424@ast.cs.vu.nl> Date: 21 Sep 88 20:45:42 GMT Sender: ast@cs.vu.nl Reply-To: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) Organization: VU Informatica, Amsterdam Lines: 28 There has been much discussion about GNU recently. Let me state a couple of simple facts. 1. Stallman is ideologically opposed to having any part of GNU be sold for profit. If MINIX 1.3 costs $79.95 without GNU stuff and MINIX 1.4 costs $79.95 with GNU stuff you and I might conclude that GNU was free. I very much doubt that Stallman would agree. 2. Without written permission from Stallman, Prentice-Hall would never even consider including any of his stuff in MINIX. Period. Their lawyers are extremely careful about respecting other people's copyrights. 3. MINIX 1.3 includes copyrighted software written by others (e.g., ELLE, dis88). In all cases I have asked for and received written permission from the copyright owner to include it. If you post something to the net marked public domain, I may take it if I like it. So may Stallman. If you mark it as copyrighted, I won't. I suspect Stallman won't either. 4. I hope that future versions of MINIX will continue to run on the PC, AT, and 386. I do not envision a 386-only version (protected mode, etc). You wouldn't believe how much trouble P-H has with the PC and AT versions. They have consistently labeled the boxes wrong, sent out wrong ads, and more. If other people want to make special versions for the 386, with or without GNU, that's fine, and you should post your doings here, but I doubt that I will pick up on it. Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)