From: keith@ksmith.uucp (Keith Smith) Subject: Re: Linux - the future? Date: Sat, 07 Nov 1992 19:56:10 GMT
In article <1992Nov2.194146.20882@mo.hobby.nl> hans@mo.hobby.nl (Hans Oey) writes:
>There is hardly any free software for MSDOS (except for
>the ported GNU stuff). I mean `free' as in Free Software
>Foundation. Source code is essential to that. Read the
>GNU Manifesto.
Then based on this criterion, there is hardly any free software for
unix, either, since if it's source code you could compile most of it for
either OS platform, and all such *FREE* software would then be software
that would be portable to *ANY* platform.
Then again you've obviously never strolled thru the PC-SIG libraries to
even *MAKE* such a ridiculus statement, and while I'll agree much of the
MS-DOS stuff is Shareware, There is also a hell of a lot of PreCompiled
Freeware, which costs only the time to find it and move it onto your
box, AS WELL AS a TON of dos based source code, much of it in venerable
TurboPASCAL and TurboC.
>A combination of GNU emacs and TeX is an excellent (and IMHO
>a vastly superior) replacement for something like WordPerfect.
>I know of at least one commercial site where this is used daily
>for business correspondence and all kind of papers. But don't
>start a religious war on that.
Of course it is IMHO being the key word here. Our Humble opinions don't
mean a whole heck of a lot to the vast majority of folks out there who
like pushing arrows with a rat either.
>I'm definitly not a technoweenie. I consider myself more
>of an end user. Fed up with unfixable bugs in commercial
>software I am trying to make up my mind whether to use
>postgress or ingress for database applications.
I wish more of my clients were like you. Unfortunately they have no
desire to learn anything that requires opening a book.
>>I don't know what direction Linus wishes to go, but I just can't devote
>>the hardware to it full time, without being able to run the stuff I
>>already have, free or not.
>
>Yeah right, you still use wordstar for CP/M!? ;-)
Nope, Never did. I used PIE/TEXT from the Software Toolworks. Hey I
like Text Processing systems, Unfortunately my clients prefer something
without a learning curve. <sigh>, and this I must also keep on my
machine in order to be able to answer trivial questions about it, and
thereby continue to make a living. Under Unix I use EMACS. I like
EMACS, I like vi. The people I work for won't use either one.
-- Keith Smith uunet!ksmith!keith 5719 Archer Rd. Digital Designs BBS 1-919-423-4216 Hope Mills, NC 28348-2201 Somewhere in the Styx of North Carolina ...