Subject: Re: Apple information...
To: David Condon <dxc4@po.cwru.edu>
From: Bill Johnston <johnston@me.udel.edu>
List: macbsd-general
Date: 01/09/1994 00:57:20
On Sat, 8 Jan 1994, David Condon wrote:

> Bill Johnston said:

> >Just understand that when you spend your time deciphering
> >undocumented chips, and working around boycotts, etc. ...
> >you're making it easier for companies like Apple to get
> >away with making it harder to hack in the future.
> 
> I am very sympathetic to the anti-Apple position, even though I own a mac. The
> idea of "look and feel" makes my skin crawl with the shackles it puts on
> creativity. But then the GNU folks turn around and say that of course since
> we want to punish Apple, we should support their competitors (Microsoft). 

The FSF has said no such thing.  In the case of Microsoft vs. Apple,
Microsoft is right to refuse to honor Apple's self-invented notion
of "look and feel" copyright by paying extortion money for the 
privilege of putting a Trash can work-alike on the Windows Program
manager screen.

Otherwise, FSF has no interest in "supporting" Microsoft.  DOS and
Windows support isn't merged into FSF distributed versions of the
GNU source trees.  FSF is interested in promoting free software. 
Neither Apple or Microsoft does much to serve their interests;
it just happens that what Apple and Lotus did was despicable. 




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