[buug] TonStanco is at it again...

[Feedlebom]

On Tue, 26 Sep 2000, Rick Moen wrote:

> Better you than me, then.  If you grant that it's a worthwhile task to
> educate writers, you still can pick which ones to work on.  

Well, it worked on my wife, so I might as well branch out.  :)

> I find it technically deficient on its merits, as a general rule.  And
> life's too short to spend time learning it.

Depends.  Being as the world still revolves around Redmond, I find having
some Windows skills useful in the job market.  I do agree that, in large,
MS Windows is generally inferior software.

> > I don't view the open source movement as the white knight saving me
> > from the evil daemons (heh) of Redmond.
> 
> <yawn>  That's so 1993.

Heh.  Don't forget: I am an old Amiga hack.

> Users on my system, when they type "pine", get mutt with the Pinerc
> configuration file.  They don't miss pine.  When they type "pico", they
> get nano -- and you can't even see any differences.

I'll try your earlier suggestion, and if it provides a comparable user
experience, you'll probably convert me.

> > While it is not completely compatible with the letter (or in some
> > cases spirit) of the GPL....
> 
> The right to distribute modified versions is an essential element of
> what makes software free.  (It's likewise a key point of the Open Source
> Definition, http://www.opensource.org/osd.html .)

While I agree that it is definately not in agreement with the "Open Source
Definition", I would argue that it's somewhat of a moot point.  I believe
that the developer has rights, too: and one of the rights I believe he has
is the right to dictate that his original code remain untainted.  UoW has
never said that patches could not be distributed, just compiled binaries
of patched versions.   But that's their choice.

Ironically enough, the "market" is sorting it out by the mere existance of
the "pine mode" in mutt.  So, in essence, there now is a GPL'ed version of
pine.  End of problem.

-Fedl