Date: Thu, 06 Jul 2000 22:54:11 -0600 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: No port of Opera? (Was: ((FreeBSD : Linux) :: (OS/2 : Windows))) Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20000706224459.04759ba0@localhost> In-Reply-To: <20000707100648.A3400@physics.iisc.ernet.in> References: <4.3.2.7.2.20000706220901.046daad0@localhost> <4.3.2.7.2.20000706203912.047e4f00@localhost> <4.3.2.7.2.20000706193313.04a8ca40@localhost> <Your <4.3.2.7.2.20000706103005.00e05660@localhost> <53082.962927902@localhost> <4.3.2.7.2.20000706193313.04a8ca40@localhost> <20000707074448.A4511@physics.iisc.ernet.in> <4.3.2.7.2.20000706203912.047e4f00@localhost> <20000707093348.A3336@physics.iisc.ernet.in> <4.3.2.7.2.20000706220901.046daad0@localhost>
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At 10:36 PM 7/6/2000, Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > > vi and emacs both emulated the screen editors that were already > > available on some commercial systems of the day. TeX was not the > > first batch-oriented text formatting program. > >But they were *major* improvements over anything that came earlier. >TeX especially. The commercial guys still haven't caught up with >it in many respects, I didn't say it wasn't good work. However, the font rendering algorithms turned out to be somewhat naive; the ones used in Adobe, TrueType, and (especially) Bitstream fonts are much better. >Sorry, if free software is good people will >use it, and if it wipes out inferior commercial stuff, so much the >better. If it incorporates a "poison pill" so that commercial developers cannot take it further (this is the mechanism used by the GPL to destroy markets), then what happens is stagnation. We're already seeing this in the world of C compilers. I'm not happy with the code quality one gets from GCC, but commercial compiler vendors are becoming mighty few due to the fact that GCC is GPLed. (Many people will even use a markedly inferior product if it's free. In this case, the mediocre is the enemy of the good.) > > Actually, Knuth has talked about this. See some of his papers and > > the heavily documented source code of TeX. > >I haven't read everything he wrote, but I don't remember his >acknowledging any commercial programs. He acknowledges folks at Xerox and IBM by name in the source, as I recall, though it's been 15 years since I've read it. > > It should. By touting GPLed software as open source, the FSF furthers > > its goal of hurting programmers -- like you and me. > >I'm not a programmer. And as a user I have benefited from it. In that case, Stallman is counting upon you to be shortsighted and to grab what appears to be in your best interest in the short term rather than thinking long term and caring about the number of options you will have in the future. This is how predatory tactics work. --Brett To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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