From: ig25@fg30.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (Thomas Koenig) Subject: Re: What would people think of binary-only software on Linux? Date: 3 Mar 1993 16:43:37 GMT
tmcwill@ukelele.GCR.COM (Thomas McWilliams) writes:
> rick@ee.uwm.edu (Rick Miller) writes:
>Binary only software distributions do not advance the art.
>Secreted source code does not benefit the Linux community at
>large. Were it not for the openness of the source code, Linux
>would be a mere a toy, if indeed it existed at all. Software
>hoarding can not be considered a "contribution". The GPL and
>the open source code have made Linux the success that it is.
>Cygnus and other commercial interests are quite comfortable
>with this open paradigm, and in fact prosper. One need only
>pull the source code to GCC and read the list of many
>commercial contributors to realize this.
Let's, for example, take Maple V, which, as far as I know, is in the
process of being ported to Linux. I'm using it under MS-DOS and HP-UX
at the moment (under a campus - wide license), and I am very interested
to run it on my work PC under Linux.
So, this happens to advance my "art", in this case chemical engineering,
quite considerably.
If Linux is going to be more than a hacker's toy, it needs commercial
software, or else we are going to run Windows 3.1 or NT for the rest of
our lives :-(
-- Thomas Koenig, ig25@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de, ig25@dkauni2.bitnet The joy of engineering is to find a straight line on a double logarithmic diagram.