Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!uunet!munnari.oz.au!cs.mu.oz.au!ok
From: ok@cs.mu.oz.au (Richard O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Questions about "Free Software Foundation" (long)
Message-ID: <2245@munnari.oz.au>
Date: 28 Sep 89 10:50:14 GMT
References: <980@mrsvr.UUCP> <6590268@hplsla.HP.COM> <6602@thor.acc.stolaf.edu>
Sender: news@cs.mu.oz.au
Lines: 48

In article <6602@thor.acc.stolaf.edu>, mike@thor.acc.stolaf.edu (Mike Haertel) writes:
> I think this is total nonsense.  I'm not a lawyer either, but I'd
> like to clarify a few things.  I work for the Free Software Foundation.

> The real objection lawyers have against us is that they worry that,
> since we have no profit motive to keep us from doing so, we might
> engage in nuisance suits against people we doing things we don't like
> with our programs.  What the lawyers fail to see, are perhaps incapable of
> seeing, is that there's more to life than profit.  Our motive is that
> we *want people to use our programs*.  So we're not going to go around
> engaging in frivolous suits that we'd lose anyway, just to bug people.
> Because people would stop using our programs.

Why bash lawyers?  They're not here, just us apprentice wizards.
Lawyers are DELIGHTED with the FSF:  anyone who goes around making
obscure threats (and face it, friends, the Copyleft is an obscure threat)
is more likely to increase their custom than otherwise.  (Just think
about the number of lawyers who must have been asked "is it safe for us
to use this stuff?".  They get _paid_ to answer such questions.)

I recently got a copy of Oaklisp from CMU.  It's an object oriented Scheme
variant, with multiple inheritance and all sorts of good stuff.  There are
lots of things I hoped to do with it, but now I'm not going to.  Why?
Because it's covered by an FSF-style copyleft.  If I make an improvement
to Oaklisp, I just simply can't afford to give it away.  I can't even
afford to give the diffs back to the original authors, because the CopyLeft
would land me with obligations for years.  I am _not_ making money out of
software, it's precisely because I'm _not_ making money that I can't afford
all this hassle.  Another example:  I picked up a copy of GPERF.  It could
stand a lot of improvement.  But I can't afford the hassle involved in
letting anyone else have the improvements, so I've thrown it away.  Another
example:  I made a number of changes to BISON to make it work on machines
without alloca(), in fact to make it work happily under System V without
even needing an emulation of alloca().  (In point of fact it turns out that
there was never any real benefit in using alloca() in the first place.)
Have I given these diffs to anyone?  No way; I'm not going to get lumbered
for the next three years with the obligation to send the FULL sources to
ANYONE AT ALL who asks.  (That's what the CopyLeft demands, friends.)

If the FSF *really* wanted to "stamp out software hoarding", they would
make it easy for people to share improvements to their code.  Instead,
they fill every manual with 9 pages of legalistic bumf which has the
*opposite* effect.

-- 
GNUs are more derived than other extant alcelaphines,| Richard A. O'Keefe
such as bonteboks, and show up later in the fossil   | visiting Melbourne
record than less highly derived species.  (Eldredge) | ok@munmurra.cs.mu.OZ.au