reason why a few sources should come with binary licenses

Barry Shein root at bu-cs.UUCP
Fri Sep 13 09:22:13 AEST 1985


Re: Lots of 'you can too fix that without the sources'

First: You're all right, absolutely unequivocally. Putting your own frob
into /etc/inittab which does some stuff and then invokes getty or your
own /bin/login seems to solve a lot of the problems mentioned.
Re-writing various UNIX commands from scratch is also mentioned, but I
take this less seriously (except from RMS and the GNU folks :-)

So...My question is: is it true? There is no rational argument for
including a few sources with a binary UNIX license? Or is everyone just
showing how cleverly they can work around what they really need (an
animal in a trap will gnaw its foot off to get out)? I mean, ya shoulda
seen the things we did to the RT11 binaries about 10 years ago, woulda
made a grown man cry!

Maybe it's just me, but I really hate the way this UNIX source thing is
going, source sites becoming the small minority and being threatened
with extinction. I think the death of UNIX lies down that road as
adaptation slows to a crawl. But that's a different argument.

	-Barry Shein, Boston University



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