Subject: Re: Ethics in programming; not likel From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1995/10/20 Newsgroups: comp.software-eng,comp.object,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <19951020T160257Z@naggum.no> [Colin James III] | The first two first rate scholars; Don Knuth is a first rate | educator. | | Stallman is not a scholar, or an educator. Stallman is an avowed | humanist, placing man at the center of the universe, not God. a religious fanatic at work. how quaint. | Stallman has had absolutely no effect whatsoever on the development of | Eiffel, as far as I know, and no Eiffel compiler vendor has bought into | the lame gnu license copywrong. this may be why Eiffel is not much used. | Your argument is invalid, and your ethics reek of subterfuge. before anyone replies to "the retired reverend", note that his attitude to responding to those who reply to him is as follows: ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Colin James III (The Rt Rev'd) does not read electronic mail which is unsolicited, as was the post above, but may be reached by US Mail at: CEC Services 2080 Kipling Street Lakewood, Colorado 80215-1502 U S A ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ignore him. there are always people who will work against anything great. typically, they hide behind some religion to denigrate good men to please their own fantasies. RMS has certainly changed my mind over the past decade, from ardent believer in the right to control software, but this is like refusing students of the theater to read plays unless they pay for the right to perform it, to ardent believer in the benefits of reading source code. like in all other written art, one learns by studying the masters. RMS has made this possible and now also popular in the art of software. if anything, the lasting effect of his work will be improved skills among programmers, a true historic effect on the art. considering the quality of commercial software, we should be thankful that someone is workign to give students of programming access to the great lore of their predecessors, instead of reinventing wheels over and over again. I'd nominate RMS for a Nobel Prize in Literature, for bringing the art of writing computer software into the realm of the literate. #<Erik 3023193775> -- a good picture may well be worth a thousand words, but on the WWW, even bad imagemaps cost tens of thousands of words.