On Fri, Dec 05, 2003 at 01:18:00AM -0800, Alvin Oga wrote: > > and in my book, gpl licenses should be changed anyway ... now's a > good time .. :-0 to tighten its reins too
There are two aspects to GPL: "just show me the source dumbass" and "how dare you charge me $50,000 for this shitty software". The first is dead on: at Microsoft, there are .pdb servers so you can get complete stack traces on core dumps. (The .pdbs in Checked Builds of Windows are partially stripped). When I was working with ISVs, the hardest thing was to get them to give us .pdbs, because most people don't build know to build Symbols in release mode, and two their scared. But absolutely nothing useful can be learned without a proper stacktrace. The closed-source industry should emulate the "free exchange of ideas part" The second part is understandable but ultimately not defensible: there really is no correlation between the cost of software and its value, so you always end up in these stupid situation where you've spent $100,000 for software and you're pulling 36-hour shifts to keep it running. But the correct way to fix that problem is to improve software quality and incrementally lower prices -- the way the market fixes things. Stallman unfortunately ate too much acid (as some of us have too :-) and got his hatred of his parents (the root cause of all political protests) chocolate mixed up in his peanut butter. He probably was pissed off because his Research Grant got denied or some other academia niggling issue -- colllege people are notorious about bitching over funding. It's the second part that is silly and will not stand up in court. The first part is okay. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
