Subject: Re: I don't understand Lisp From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1998/11/07 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3119452017993412@naggum.no> * Craig Brozefsky <craig@onshore.com> | That parenthetical statement is a rationalizing crock of shit. It's | alot easier to relax the restrictions on redistribution, modification | and use when they are a few sentence of legalese, than when those | restrictions are due to nonportable bytecode, and lack of a human | readable representation for bug fixing and modification. you might not be aware that paying customers of Franz Inc get a lot of source code with their support agreement. regexp.cl is in there, and you can fix bugs and modify it. if you plan on distributing an application with the changed version, you are probably "a few sentences of legalese" away from doing that -- I haven't needed to, so don't know for certain. | Also, binary distribution is just as capable of carrying restirctions on | use and redistribution, like the "free" linux version of ACL does. I'm puzzled. what would it take for you to unquote "free"? how does your quoting "free" here relate to your lack of appreciation for the point that source code once read is a serious liability to writing your own, independent version? the "Free" Software Foundation is very adamant that people not even look at non-free source code when duplicating the functionality. in the strictest legal sense, giving you source code that is not freely redistributable _does_ reduce your ability to talk about the problems the source code you have read solves, since you are no longer as free to share particulars of your experience and understanding. please try to understand that source availability is not itself the panacea it is cracked up to be -- it is the _redistributability_ that is responsible for the visible benefits of source availability. #:Erik -- The Microsoft Dating Program -- where do you want to crash tonight?