Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu! AI.MIT.EDU!rms From: r...@AI.MIT.EDU Newsgroups: gnu.gcc Subject: info-gcc is not a common carrier Message-ID: <8905310246.AA00550@sugar-bombs.ai.mit.edu> Date: 31 May 89 02:46:22 GMT Sender: dae...@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Distribution: gnu Organization: GNUs Not Usenet Lines: 42 The GNU mailing lists are not an open forum for all purposes. We set them up to promote free software and that is all they should be used for. Any other advertisements of proprietary software, or activities in support of monopolies on software, is also misuse of the list. We certainly would take steps to prevent persistent, deliberate misuse. Whether we decide to permit hostile commercial activities to use our mailing lists has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Freedom of speech means the freedom to address the public with the assistance of such people as wish to help. Apple can do this no matter what I say or do. They have the money to place ads in dozens of magazines every week. However, Apple's freedom of speech does not mean we are obligated to republish whatever Apple wants to say. FSF is not obligated to lend its mailing lists to hostile purposes. Likewise, Apple isn't obligated by our freedom of speech to publish our criticism of Apple in the publications they give their customers (and they surely would not). I am not considering adopting policies like those of Apple. I don't think we should block messages which merely criticize us, like Berry's latest message. I am considering blocking messages which actually try to block our work, such as his previous message. I haven't decided yet what to do. My first attempt to fight back was by reminding all of you of the harm that Apple was trying to do, hoping that this would make up for whatever Apple gained by misusing the list. But if people did show Berry their hostility, they didn't tell the list, and it didn't discourage him. So I must now look for a different way to fight back. The decision may be affected by what you people think. However, if you wish to argue against monitoring, you should use arguments other than "Apple's freedom of speech", since (as explained above) I think that is not valid. However, if you do disapprove of us for considering "censorship", I do wish to hear from you. Even though I think you are mistaken, I still want to know how many of you there are. Likewise, if you disapprove more of Apple than you did two weeks ago, then I wish to hear from you.
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!deimos.cis.ksu.edu!uxc! garcon!garcon.cso.uiuc.edu!grunwald From: grunw...@flute.cs.uiuc.edu (Dirk Grunwald) Newsgroups: gnu.gcc Subject: Re: info-gcc is not a common carrier Message-ID: <GRUNWALD.89May31000443@flute.cs.uiuc.edu> Date: 31 May 89 05:04:43 GMT References: <8905310246.AA00550@sugar-bombs.ai.mit.edu> Sender: n...@garcon.cso.uiuc.edu Reply-To: grunw...@flute.cs.uiuc.edu Distribution: gnu Organization: University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Lines: 20 In-reply-to: rms@AI.MIT.EDU's message of 31 May 89 02:46:22 GMT I think that the efforts of FSF would be best served by supporting the AUX version of gcc. My reasoning is that e.g., a (good) C compiler on Apple would cost the equivilent apple compiler a significant market share; this hits a company like apple where it does the most -- in the wallet. Similarly, any FSF sets of tools which replace commerical apple functionality should be encouraged. Thus, using gcc to produce a good version of the X server for an Apple would be inline with that. However, this could make the apple more appealing to users; personally, I doubt it, since it's very over-priced. People wouldn't be buying an Apple because FSF tools worked on it, but they would use them & not buy the equivilent Apple tools. -- Dirk Grunwald Univ. of Illinois grunw...@flute.cs.uiuc.edu
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu! cs.utexas.edu!uunet!shelby!polya!shap From: s...@polya.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan S. Shapiro) Newsgroups: gnu.gcc Subject: Re: info-gcc is not a common carrier Message-ID: <9599@polya.Stanford.EDU> Date: 31 May 89 07:06:45 GMT References: <8905310246.AA00550@sugar-bombs.ai.mit.edu> Sender: Jonathan S. Shapiro <s...@polya.Stanford.EDU> Reply-To: s...@polya.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan S. Shapiro) Distribution: gnu Organization: Stanford University Lines: 55 In article <8905310246.AA00...@sugar-bombs.ai.mit.edu> r...@AI.MIT.EDU writes: >The GNU mailing lists are not an open forum for all purposes. Bull****. >We set them up to promote free software and that is all they should be used >for. Any other advertisements of proprietary software, or activities >in support of monopolies on software, is also misuse of the list. We >certainly would take steps to prevent persistent, deliberate misuse. [... context removed in which it becomes clear that the author is talking abuot info-gcc ] First, financially I have as much right to use the info-gcc mailing list as you do. You simply don't have a leg to stand on, because you have no right of ownership on the mailing list in question. More to the point, if I post something to the netnews group gnu.gcc, and it gets cross posted to info-gcc (which I am doing right now), it is *your* fault, not mine. >However, Apple's freedom of speech does not mean we are obligated to >republish whatever Apple wants to say. If you were a publishing agency in the first place, this argument would have some merit. Since you aren't, it doesn't, and the group's interaction with public forums such as netnews renders the argument largely vacuous, even if you were a private publishing agency. My damn tax dollars payed for your machines at MIT. > FSF is not obligated to lend its mailing lists to hostile purposes. FSF doesn't own the mailing list. > >However, if you do disapprove of us for considering "censorship", I do >wish to hear from you. Even though I think you are mistaken, I still >want to know how many of you there are. Likewise, if you disapprove >more of Apple than you did two weeks ago, then I wish to hear from >you. I submit that you are exercising the same sort of fascism that Apple is. It isn't helpful to Apple, to David Berry, or to FSF. FSF gets a lot of rope on it's image as "the good guy" in this whole mess. This sort of crap, if it continues, may destroy that image, and it is particularly dangerous now that the media has caught on to FSF. Just think about it, and if you must make proprietary arguments about FSF, ground them in fact instead of fantasy. If you want to be fascist, that's up to you, but don't be fascist about things that *my* tax dollars are ultimately paying for. Jon
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!YAHI.STANFORD.EDU! tiemann From: tiem...@YAHI.STANFORD.EDU (Michael Tiemann) Newsgroups: gnu.gcc Subject: info-gcc is not a common carrier Message-ID: <8905310749.AA01977@yahi.stanford.edu> Date: 31 May 89 07:49:42 GMT References: <GRUNWALD.89May31000443@flute.cs.uiuc.edu> Sender: dae...@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Reply-To: tiem...@lurch.stanford.edu Distribution: gnu Organization: GNUs Not Usenet Lines: 21 It is naive, if not selfish, to believe that FSF can further its goals by supporting, in any way, their software on machines built by companies such as Apple. The rationalizations given are shallow, and are very much like the ones given as to why the U.S. should continue to do business with South Africa: while we pour millions of dollars into the pockets of Pretoria, buying diamonds or selling weapons for the purposes of "maintaining influence", we enrich and reward the perpetrators of evil, which only gives them more power to brutalize and exploit the people we claim are being helped by our policies. By supporting GCC on A/UX, we only empower the people who would seek to destroy us. There may be gains which can be seen by microscope, but pull yourself away from the microscope! If we sit there, trying to determine if GCC on A/UX has cost Apple $1000 or $10,000 in lost compiler revenue, they are building a legal jail around us. If we don't look up soon, they will complete that jail, free software will be illegal, and years of hard work and all hopes that sparked it will be locked up forever. In the case of Apple, compromise carries a far greater cost than any benefit it can deliver. Michael
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!YAHI.STANFORD.EDU! tiemann From: tiem...@YAHI.STANFORD.EDU (Michael Tiemann) Newsgroups: gnu.gcc Subject: more bull**** Message-ID: <8905310809.AA01988@yahi.stanford.edu> Date: 31 May 89 08:09:22 GMT References: <9599@polya.Stanford.EDU> Sender: dae...@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Reply-To: tiem...@lurch.stanford.edu Distribution: gnu Organization: GNUs Not Usenet Lines: 25 My damn tax dollars payed for your machines at MIT. [ ... ] Just think about it, and if you must make proprietary arguments about FSF, ground them in fact instead of fantasy. If you want to be fascist, that's up to you, but don't be fascist about things that *my* tax dollars are ultimately paying for. Let's get facts and fantasies straight here. Your tax dollars are a consequence of your income, which you derive from your job as a computer professional. The high demand for computer expertise is a consequence of the breadth and depth to which computers have become a part of our society. Computers may well have remained top-secret technology, built by the few for the few, but people at MIT brought them out of the closet and into the hands of the people--you and me. Were it not for the MIT hackers, computers would have remained toys of the military that paid for them. MIT opened up computing. They made it possible for us to play with, then to study, then to work computers. The portion of your taxes going to MIT are but a small fraction of the money you owe them for making your job possible. Let's not forget that connection. Michael
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!shelby!polya!shap From: s...@polya.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan S. Shapiro) Newsgroups: gnu.gcc Subject: Re: more bull**** Message-ID: <9600@polya.Stanford.EDU> Date: 31 May 89 09:30:33 GMT References: <9599@polya.Stanford.EDU> <8905310809.AA01988@yahi.stanford.edu> Sender: Jonathan S. Shapiro <s...@polya.Stanford.EDU> Reply-To: s...@polya.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan S. Shapiro) Distribution: gnu Organization: Stanford University Lines: 35 In article <8905310809.AA01...@yahi.stanford.edu> tiem...@lurch.stanford.edu writes: > > My damn tax dollars payed for your machines at MIT. >Let's get facts and fantasies straight here. Your tax dollars are a >consequence of your income, which you derive from your job as a >computer professional. [...] MIT opened up computing. They made >it possible for us to play with, then to study, then to work >computers. The portion of your taxes going to MIT are but a small >fraction of the money you owe them for making your job possible. >Let's not forget that connection. Whether this is "fact" is seriously debatable. MIT as an organization has done absolutely nothing of the sort. Certain individuals at MIT, acting on their own behalf, have done a tremendous amount of laudable work of the kind you describe. I have no objection to FSF being supported in part by my taxes, by way of DARPA, NSF, and other funding mechanisms facilities that payed for most of the machines and the supporting networks on which the FSF work is done. I think it is money well spent, if for no other reason than the fact that FSF has promoted some competition which has led to generally better compilers. What I do object to is when people use that revenue for the sort of fascist bull**** that our friend at tut and a few others have been engaging in. Kindly do that on your own dollars, not on mine and the supporting dollars of over a thousand companies across the US and the world that pay directly for the transmission of the newsgroups. Newsgroups and mailing lists cannot rationally be said to "belong" to a group that isn't the sole funder of the relevant newsgroup or mailing list. Jon
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu! triceratops.cis.ohio-state.edu!karl From: k...@triceratops.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) Newsgroups: gnu.gcc Subject: Attitude Message-ID: <KARL.89May31090246@triceratops.cis.ohio-state.edu> Date: 31 May 89 13:02:46 GMT References: <9599@polya.Stanford.EDU> <8905310809.AA01988@yahi.stanford.edu> <9600@polya.Stanford.EDU> Sender: n...@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Distribution: gnu Organization: OSU Lines: 93 In-reply-to: shap@polya.Stanford.EDU's message of 31 May 89 09:30:33 GMT Would everyone do me a large favor? Please push your chair back away from your desk, take a deep breath, and relax. Go get yourself a Coke or a beer or <pick your favorite beverage> and reduce your blood pressure by a good ten points or more. Put your feet up for a few moments. De-hyperventilate a bit. Sheesh. A point or two, mostly reality injections. Ownership of mailing lists and/or newsgroups could be asserted to one degree or another. For example, Len could shut down the mailing lists unilaterally and decline to give anyone copies of the old alias files. "Possession is 9/10ths of the law" and other trite phrases apply. I don't think Len would do such a thing (he seems to be too mellow an individual, frankly), but he *could*. Similarly, I could bend a lot of people's minds out of shape by annihilating a dozen aliases from /usr/lib/aliases here, as well as a dozen lines in my sys file. That would dry up the info-gcc/gnu.gcc connection really fast - and thereby nothing written on gnu.gcc would ever reach RMS, since he gets this stuff via info-gcc rather than gnu.gcc. (In exactly identical terms, I "own" two mailing lists, firearms and firearms-politics. I exercise rather complete control over them, to the extent that I installed a "fire extinguisher" filter on firearms last week in order to forestall certain antisocial tendencies on the part of certain subscribers. I can permit or deny access to anyone I wish. And I daresay that there are no addresses of the form ....@apple.com in Len's alias files.) You will, of course, immediately inform me that you could recreate either the mailing lists or the gnu.* mail/news gateway yourself. True enough - post a note to the Usenet in suitable newsgroups, and you can resurrect the mailing lists; get a copy of Erik Fair's gateway code, and you can rebuild the mail/news gateway. However, in the process of doing so: [a] You will lose time, the most valuable of commodities; figuring out the configuration of the gateway alone will take you a month, working from scratch - it's deeply contorted stuff, hence the occasional breakages which we find and Bob gets fixed. It's amazing to think of the thousands of irritated people out there when breakages happen - and just think, *you* can take on the privilege of getting the flammable mail when it happens. (Bob does essentially all the news/mail gateway stuff - I am blissfully unaware of any but the highest-level configuration details.) [b] You will lose readers/participants, if for no other reasons than that many would stop participating without RMS' presence, or a lack of motivation to get re-subscribed to new mailing lists which might or might not be as well run as Len's. Granted, transport depends largely upon the ongoing largesse of governments and corporations which pay to push the bits around. But transport control != logistical control. It's been suggested that taxes paid over the past N years constitute repayment of debt for work done by CS researchers over that time period. That's like asking for first cause in the Palestinian debate. You're not going to get an answer, so stop asking the question. As for whether Apple's stuff belongs here or not, well, I've got an opinion but I'm going to be exceedingly diplomatic and refuse to say what it is. There are several issues to be considered beyond the fact of Apple's litigious tendencies. There is the question of whether anything done by FSF can be large enough to have an effect on Apple - it is entirely possible that there are simply far too many people out there buying MacSE's to use as "dumb" Macs who are completely unaware of the political outlook of either Apple or FSF, and those people may constitute the real financial base of Apple. In juxtaposition against that, there is the possibility that FSF could raise the level of awareness of exactly those people and hence become sufficiently "large" in their minds to have FSF's desired effect. The issue goes both ways. Pseudosupport of Apple via availability of FSF products could push the matter either way. But temper altitude and bad attitude won't do it, no matter whose side you're on. All I really want right now is for folks to answer RMS' question regarding how you feel about Apple, and for everyone to keep their tempers in check while this happens. A civil question was asked; a civil response is in order. Kindly keep the vulgarity and the generally bad attitudes between yourselves and your officemates; genuinely skillful use of obscenities is uniformly absent on the Internet. Distribute some useful data for FSF's consideration instead. --Karl Sysadmin of tut.cis.ohio-state.edu, Home of GNU mail/news gateway
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!uxc!garcon! garcon.cso.uiuc.edu!grunwald From: grunw...@flute.cs.uiuc.edu (Dirk Grunwald) Newsgroups: gnu.gcc Subject: Re: info-gcc is not a common carrier Message-ID: <GRUNWALD.89May31082402@flute.cs.uiuc.edu> Date: 31 May 89 13:24:02 GMT References: <8905310246.AA00550@sugar-bombs.ai.mit.edu> <GRUNWALD.89May31000443@flute.cs.uiuc.edu> <16219@paris.ics.uci.edu> Sender: n...@garcon.cso.uiuc.edu Reply-To: grunw...@flute.cs.uiuc.edu Distribution: gnu Organization: University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Lines: 18 In-reply-to: schmidt@ics.uci.edu's message of 31 May 89 07:17:15 GMT Several people pointed out that AUX doesn't charge extra for compilers -- I had assumed that they were like XENIX & some other UNIX machines where you had to buy a ``software development'' package to get a compiler. If it's not the case that FSF products compete directly with priced Apple products, then no, little effort should be put into maintaining Apple compatibility. However, on the same foot, should IBM products be support? They've engaged in dubious pricing practices in the past, although that's largely behind them now. And DEC has been suing anyone who builds BI-bus hardware and third-party disk and memory makers. What's the criteria to be used. -- Dirk Grunwald Univ. of Illinois grunw...@flute.cs.uiuc.edu
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!b-tech!zeeff From: ze...@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us (Jon Zeeff) Newsgroups: gnu.gcc Subject: Re: info-gcc is not a common carrier (really gcc on apple) Message-ID: <9410@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us> Date: 5 Jun 89 14:07:47 GMT References: <8905310246.AA00550@sugar-bombs.ai.mit.edu> <6808@ardent.UUCP> Reply-To: ze...@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us (Jon Zeeff) Distribution: gnu Organization: Branch Technology Ann Arbor, MI Lines: 15 >However, on the same foot, should IBM products be support? They've engaged in >dubious pricing practices in the past, although that's largely behind them now. >And DEC has been suing anyone who builds BI-bus hardware and third-party disk >and memory makers. What's the criteria to be used. This is what concerns me. It seems to be a personal decision by RMS. Who wants to support FSF when they might quit supporting your machine at any time? ALL companies have done things that are contrary to the goals of FSF. Don't ruin FSF in the process of trying to save it. -- Jon Zeeff ze...@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us Ann Arbor, MI sharkey!b-tech!zeeff
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!AI.MIT.EDU!rms From: r...@AI.MIT.EDU Newsgroups: gnu.gcc Subject: Don't blame me for what others suggest I do. Message-ID: <8906051843.AA00243@sugar-bombs.ai.mit.edu> Date: 5 Jun 89 18:43:46 GMT References: <9410@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us> Sender: dae...@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Distribution: gnu Organization: GNUs Not Usenet Lines: 57 Person one: >However, on the same foot, should IBM products be support? They've >engaged in dubious pricing practices in the past, although that's >largely behind them now. Person two: Who wants to support FSF when they might quit supporting your machine at any time?... ALL companies have done things that are contrary to the goals of FSF. Now here is my explanation of what is going on in these messages. The background is that I said that one company is doing something egregious, much more threatening than the unethical things all the rest do; therefore, I will boycott it. Then person one said that HE wasn't convinced that company's action was worse than the unethical activities of other companies. So he wasn't sure HE would chose to boycott that one and not the others. Then person two assumed, from this, that I am likely to boycott any and all companies that do something I consider unethical. (Note that this contradicts what I said on the issue.) And he proceeded to get bent out of shape. This kind of thing happens all too often. Whenever anyone speculates about what the FSF might do, or about what I might think, someone else takes the speculation as fact, and takes off from there. As a result, much of the discussion on info-gcc accomplishes nothing except to waste my time and mislead the readers. Who wants to support FSF when they might quit supporting your machine at any time? It is true we might quit supporting anything at any time. However, it is not true that this is related especially to politics. The FSF has never promised the public to support anything in particular. And we don't plan to make such promises. Every one of our programs carries a disclaimer saying so in no uncertain terms. There are dozens of reasons, mostly technical, why we might refuse to support something. There are machines already in the distribution for which we won't lift a finger to investigate a problem. There are features other people have implemented which we aren't boycotting but refuse to spend time to look at. Is this a reason not to support GNU? Perhaps for some of you it is. But for most of you it is overreacting. One of the virtues of free software is that you aren't dependent on any single organization for maintenance. If the FSF won't give you the support you want, you can call up someone on the service list. By contrast, if a commercial supplier goes bankrupt, you are completely helpless.