tlug: Followup to Linus letter

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Matt" == Matt Gushee <matt@example.com> writes:

    Matt> Scott Stone writes:
    >> Here's a letter from Bill Gates to the 'hobbyist' community,
    >> dated 1976, which was available on the same page as the Linus
    >> letter (you're supposed to compare them, I think):

    Matt> Well, now we know he didn't *turn* bad :-). In a similar
    Matt> vein, the other day I read somewhere that as a Harvard
    Matt> student, Mr. Gates once wrote a letter to the effect that
    Matt> "freeware is a destructive concept."  Anybody know about
    Matt> that?

Well, it's not an entirely unsupportable argument.  _Atlas Shrugged_,
Ayn Rand.  I know several freeware developers and one maintainer of a
major project who have taken "Galt's Pledge".

Although the interpretation of "shall not live for another" is
obscure, to say the least, it is certainly true that where markets
work they make the accounting implicit in that Pledge easier.  Rand
(and Gates, I would guess) took the lazy way out and ask that markets
do all the difficult accounting for them.

BTW, to the extent that members of this list are "freeware
enthusiasts", as well as "Linux enthusiasts", I don't think that the
discussions of trademark issues and so on are out of place.  If Eric
Raymond is correct (and I think he is, see the Karl-Max thread on
parallel processing, software development may not be susceptible to
parallel processing, but it certainly is to distributed processing!),
there are going to soon be broad areas where freeware dominates
slaveware both technically (as Linux already does) and economically
(gcc is not too far from there).

When that happens, you are going to start seeing battles over freeware
trademarks.  PHT/Cliff may have preempted such here in Japan, I don't
_really_ think so, but it could be.  I know of one related battle
already (Aladdin vs. FSF over Ghostscript); the GPL allows use of GPL
software in embedded systems, such as a fax (many Postscript faxes are
actually Ghostscript faxes), and Aladdin naturally (a) wanted a cut
and (b) faced the loss of substantial consulting fees from embedded
systems manufacturers, who naturally objected to paying for the
development of their competitors' systems.  So the Aladdin Public
License differs from the GPL.

We're already seeing Windose/Linux installations (I get a flyer a week
or so from local systems integrators, and they're all doing that now).
I can indeed see somebody getting the bright idea of trademarking
Linux, or trying to, at the expense of the "real" Linux community.
There are lots of people using Linux now who actually don't care that
it's free software.

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