Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!uunet!crdgw1!sungod!davidsen
From: davidsen@sungod.crd.ge.com (ody)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: BISON, GCC, and the GNU public license. (Re: increasing yacc states)
Message-ID: <1606@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>
Date: 9 Aug 89 17:11:14 GMT
References:  <26@ark1.nswc.navy.mil> <26947@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <5524@ficc.uu.net>
Sender: news@crdgw1.crd.ge.com
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: General Electric Corp. R&D, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 28

In article <5524@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:

| > Final comment: you seem to care an awful lot about the licensing
| > restrictions on software you don't use.
| 
| Because I consider RMS' goals to be evil and rude, and unless someone
| stands up and says so lots of people, like you, are going to go along
| with him. The idea of living in the world RMS is trying to make frankly
| scares me.

  Although I disagree with RMS, and have said so in the past, I don't
think his ideas are so much *evil* as impractical. The idea of some rich
bunch of programmers dispensing software as a bounty is interesting, but
in the long term the people who will keep writing and supporting
software are being paid for it.

  I obviously like the idea of free software, and I've posted and
otherwise made a reasonable quantity available, back to the CP/M days.
What I don't like is the idea that having done so I have any moral
high ground from which I can force people to give their creations away.
In fact I couldn't afford to have a computer of my own if I didn't sell
some software now and then.

  I will leave the question of "rude" alone, with regard to the goals
and the person.
	bill davidsen		(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM)
  {uunet | philabs}!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me