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Re: Free Art vs Free Software: A Double Standard?
- To: "Diego G. Iastrubni" <iastrubn(at-nospam)actcom.co.il>
- Subject: Re: Free Art vs Free Software: A Double Standard?
- From: "Nadav Har'El" <nyh(at-nospam)math.technion.ac.il>
- Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2001 18:25:30 +0300
- Cc: "Stanislav Malyshev a.k.a Frodo" <frodo(at-nospam)sharat.co.il>, Linux-IL Mailing List <linux-il(at-nospam)linux.org.il>
- Delivered-To: linux.org.il-linux-il@linux.org.il
- Hebrew-Date: 14 Av 5761
- In-Reply-To: <01080315054906.00605@localhost.localdomain>; from iastrubn@actcom.co.il on Fri, Aug 03, 2001 at 03:05:49PM +0300
- References: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0108031458040.1332-100000@frodo.sharat.co.il> <01080315054906.00605@localhost.localdomain>
- Sender: linux-il-bounce(at-nospam)cs.huji.ac.il
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On Fri, Aug 03, 2001, Diego G. Iastrubni wrote about "Re: Free Art vs Free Software: A Double Standard?":
> Anyway why do you need a code, if you do not have a compiler? If you need to
> buy it, to compile a program it is pointless (IMHO).
> Anyway what will be the future of free-opensourced-win32 programs ? There
> will be not good copmiler? BC is free but will you code for gui with it?
> (went totally of topic sorry)
You seem to forget that free software existed before Linux, and its free
OS and compiler. For example, consider Sun workstations of 10 years ago.
You bought their hardware (of course) and then you bought their SunOS
operating system, which came with a limited selection of utilities and a
basic K&R C compiler (later Sun charged extra for a compiler, but at first
they didn't). Nobody cared about having to buy the extra OS, or compiler,
or whatever, because they didn't have a choice - it was simply seen as part
of the hardware's cost (if Sun hardware cost X dollars, and the necessary
software cost Y dollars, you would just say "A Sun machine costs X+Y dollars").
But even on that non-free OS you had the choice to run free software. Ten
years ago I installed gcc (which was ANSI C, while Sun's C was not) and a
couple of years later also g++. I installed groff because I thought it was
better than Sun's troff. Three more years later I installed MIT's X11R4
distribution because I was sick and tired of the crappy X version we had on
our sun machine. Took me *hours* to compile (using gcc that was in turn built
using Sun's commercial compiler), but it was worth it. Earlier I also started
installing things like GNU's fileutils which I considered better than Sun's
utilities, and installed stuff Sun didn't provide like TeX, Emacs, Tcl/Tk,
and so on. All this on a machine whose OS and basic compiler was not free.
What prevents you from doing the same on Windows? You can buy Windows,
buy a compiler, and then you'll be able to compile a lot of free software
on Windows. If you get a precompiled version of gcc, you don't even
need to buy a compiler (the "bootstraping" problem).
I know people like that, who are forced to use Windows machines in their
work, but who still prefer zsh (for example) over Window's command.com, like
to use tools like "df", "ls", "du", and so on over Windows' graphical tools,
use TeX, Ghostscript, and so on on Windows. What's wrong with that? (I
mean, except the basic fact that you're doing all that on top of the
Inherently Evil(tm) Windows).
One could argue that in this case the source-code is useless, and that it
will be easier for the users to just get executables. Well, this is true in
the same sense that Redhat users prefer to get binary RPMs to getting source
code and compiling it on their own. But it is nice to also have source at
your disposal, because source code still gets you more power, ultimately:
you can change the program you're using (if you want), you can understand
exactly what it's doing (if you want), and you can compile on "wierd"
machines. For example, 15 years ago I had a commercial C compiler on my
Commodore 64 (it cost around $100 at the time). If it would still work, I
could compile small free utilities on it! If you have source, you also don't
depend on a single person or company to keep producing binaries for you on
new systems: in my free software essay at
http://nadav.harel.org.il/essays/lfe.html
I gave an example where I bought a utility that worked on Windows 3.1 and 95,
but no longer worked on Windows NT - probably because of a very small bug.
In my case the company still existed and was willing to sell me (for full
price) a new NT version, but what if the company went bankrupt? And what if
an important part of your work or personal stuff depended on that piece of
software working? If you had the source code, you would have been able to fix
it yourself to compile on NT - or pay someone to do it for you (e.g., if your
PhD thesis is suddenly no longer readable by your word-processor, I bet you'd
be willing to pay a few thousand shekels to fix that).
See my essay (link above) if you want to know more about what I think about
the importance of free software.
--
Nadav Har'El | Friday, Aug 3 2001, 14 Av 5761
nyh@math.technion.ac.il |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |The two most common elements in the
http://nadav.harel.org.il |universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
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