GNU considered harmful to software quality

[rdoty at bronze.UUCP]

According to watmath!bstempleton:

	>One free medium quality program (and I am not saying GNU
	>will be thus, simply that if the state of the art advances,
	>it will become thus) ruins the chances of several high
	>quality programs.  I ask all people interested in GNU
	>to consider this, and to question if they wish to risk
	>destroying the work of everybody else working in operating
	>systems.

Bosh.

You represent "free" as being something fundamentally different from "cheaper",
which I see no justification for.

Example.  If the public domain software that is taking away your customers
were instead priced at, say, 1/3 of your price, the effect would be the
same: some people would buy it instead.  At the same time, some people
would still buy yours (as they do now).  And some of them would do so,
knowing full well that there was a cheaper product available.  In either
case they get the product they feel is best for their needs.

Richard Doty	tektronix!tekmdp!rdoty

p.s. - maybe this discussion ought to be moved someplace else, like
       net.unix