Re: please use V

[Tom Julien]

Chris Fearnley [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

[Removed debian-devel from the Cc: list as this is beyond Debian
policy.]

Followed Bruce's distribution list, but thank you for the info.

Have you looked at the Aladdin Ghostscript Free Public License?  Peter
Deutsch has thought a lot about these issues.  Why did the Qt people
not use his approach?

Yes indeed.  Unfortunately, it doesn't really help steer folks
from propietary environments to open-standards-based ones either.
Additionally, gs is already ported to the M$ environment, and
the previous version usually gets released under the GPL a year
later.


Mark Eichin [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 It's difficult enough to promote freeware in industry with
 the common lack of support misperception.  Combine this

I'd suggest that rather than fixing that with wierd licenses, you
just do better marketing.  Works for us :-)

Very good point, and Cygnus certainly has done a good job of
it.  The problem is that it becomes increasingly tough to
market the excellent freeware tools and open standards of
Unix when clients have more and more of these same tools
available to them under NT.  Price and performance figures
carry far less weight without the leverage of tools/apps.
As a result, it's difficult for me to understand why we
continue to donate s/w to environments like M$.  In a sense,
we perpetuate the beast, and don't offer the enticing
migration path to Unix that we could be.


Just my 0.05 yen worth.  Have a nice holiday.


Tom Julien
[EMAIL PROTECTED]



--
TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: please use V

[Tom Julien]

Please note:  the following is in no way intended as flame
to Bruce, Debian, or the FSF...

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bruce Perens) writes:

From: William Burrow [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 While the Qt authors may have different concerns than Knuth does over 
 TeX, the idea may be the same:  modified versions may reflect badly on 
 Troll Tech.

I understand their concern, I just don't share it. Debian doesn't place
this sort of restriction on the system. I think I'll encourage people to
use V - it's GPL-ed and arguing about Qt's license just isn't our job.

For sure, the GPL is great in many respects.  Unfortunately,
it doesn't address tumors like Micro$oft that continue to
stunt the growth of computing, and in particular here,
diminish the significance of open standards and freeware.

It's difficult enough to promote freeware in industry with
the common lack of support misperception.  Combine this
with M$'s current position in the market and in a large
percentage of the corporate and household mind-set.  Then
port and donate the same great freeware that runs under
Unix/X11 to the Windows* environment.  A highly needed
competitive edge is lost for all that embrace/promote it.
Or, in other words, donating freeware with a GPL doesn't
necessarily help steer people to open standards, the FSF
philosophy, etc. the way that it could.

IMHO, a license like Qt's is long overdue.  It makes a fine
commercial product available to both X11 and Win32, yet it
provides a great mechanism to promote freeware/open standards
like Unix/X11 *over* propriety ones.  Troll's reasoning for
not allowing modified versions may not include this rationale,
but I am certainly tickled pink to see it for this very reason.

Please work with Troll on this -- you may find that there's
no need to argue at all.


Tom Julien
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


--
TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]