Date: Thu, 06 Jul 2000 22:21:19 -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: <4.3.2.7.2.20000706220901.046daad0@localhost> In-Reply-To: <20000707093348.A3336@physics.iisc.ernet.in> References: <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>
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At 10:03 PM 7/6/2000, Rahul Siddharthan wrote: >> Remember, most open source software consists of copies of commercial >> products. The commercial products need to be there first. And the > >I never knew that. I'm thinking of TeX, vi, emacs, most >email/internet software, etc. 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. The first WAN e-mail software was around long before the Internet; Datapoint had it, as did IBM and Texas Instruments. (TI wasn't known as a networking pioneer because they weren't successful at marketing their technology, but they used it in-house because their business was spread out between so many cities.) > What would I have done without those >kind and generous commercial developers. Since you take everything I >write literally, I suppose I must return the compliment and believe >you too, but I wonder where Knuth stole *his* ideas from.... Actually, Knuth has talked about this. See some of his papers and the heavily documented source code of TeX. >> Finally, too much of the software out there that claims to be "Open >> Source" is not Open Source at all. It's GPLed. (The GPL violates the > >Doesn't bother me. It should. By touting GPLed software as open source, the FSF furthers its goal of hurting programmers -- like you and me. >Besides, are you saying that if something is GPL'd, the FreeBSD binary doesn't >count as a "native port"? No, I'm not saying that. However, if it is GPLed, it is undesirable in that it propagates and promotes the GPL and the FSF agenda. >So go out and write your own and put what licence you like on it. Yes, that's right: Go ahead and burn yourself out reimplementing the wheel. Oh, and you'll never get paid for your time because the FSF's lemmings have destroyed the market. Right. Sure. This is reminiscent of Microsoft's Jim Allchin: "We'll put them on a treadmill." >The >so-called "linux crowd" is doing that, and they're quite entitled to >use the GPL if they prefer to. No one is entitled to intentionally harm others or engage in predatory business practices. > And many FreeBSD users are quite happy >to use the same software via the ports. The only way to change that >is to do better yourself, Playing John Henry is not the correct solution. --Brett Glass To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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