On Thu, 6 Apr 2000, David Starner wrote:
> The authors position, as explained by them in a long flamewar on
> gnu.misc.discuss, was that they didn't want anyone ripping off
> their code to improve stuff like Java and other non functional
> programming languages, which is why they were going to stay non-free.
> Apparently, they were convinced that Open Source or DFSG-free
> was the way to go, so they picked the most restrictive license
> they could find to keep people from improving "inferior"
> technologies. (Sorry if that was a little opinionated - but
> the facts should be accurate.)
>
This is what was confusing me (I saw some posts in either that flamewar
or a related one). What I recalled was them wanting you to redistribute
modifications separately and keep the original intact (I believe there was
a motivation of keeping grant money flowing to them as an explanation of
why they didn't want their code to be of direct help to other language
implementations mentioned - but I can't remember, at this point, whether
that was a defense offered by one of the authors or an attack by someone
else).
Anyway, I just wanted to know if I could write free software in that
language or if I should avoid it for lack of a free compiler/interpreter.
Looks like the answer is, I can.
Thanks,
Lynn
