Fw: Query about GNU-GPL

Alfred M. Szmidt ams at kemisten.nu
Wed Mar 30 21:29:45 UTC 2005


I don't know if this is a troll or not since it contains so many
factual errors that it is silly, but here is the response.

   > You have a very skewed view of history, software has been quite
   > reliable since before Windows, if anything Windows started the idea
   > that software _doesn't_ have to be reliable.

   What are you on?  Go back, look at why Linux was started. 

Once again, your view on history is skewed, and your logic is bogus.
Linux isn't a operating system, so comparing it to Windows is not
doable, then you have the smallish problem that Linux was started as a
private hack, and only after a while did it start to use components
from the GNU project to provide a complete system, GNU/Linux.

I suggest that you take a look at why the GNU project was started
instead; which has a history that is far longer then Linux and
Windows; it dates back to the 1960s!  Then you might wish to stop
equating "computer history" with just microcomputers.

   Windows gave and gives far more freedom than most operating system
   providers did before it.

Plain and utter lie.  ITS provided complete source code and was free
AFAIK, that system is from the 1960's, then you had the Lisp machines
(LMI atleast, Symbolics made the system non-free if I remeber
correctly) which provided complete source code to the whole system and
was also free AFAIK, and that is from the 1970 to 1980s, then you have
GNU and the BSDs.

   The only comparable would be the home computer systems like the
   Amiga, Sinclair and Acorns - contrast against Sun at that time.

Once again, stop comparing computer history against microcomputers,
they make up a really small part of computer history.  But if you wish
to still compare them, then you should look at say what the Apple II
provided in the manual, complete source code for all ROM code, and I
think the license permited you to change and distribute the changes of
it.  It is Microsoft who started the whole trend of making things
non-free in the microcomputer world, outside of that world it was
quite common, and before it it was also quite common.

So please, go and learn your history before you start bitching with
me.

   GPL believers get so worked up about the evils of Microsoft

Can you stop this idiotic name calling?





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