O'pain Software Foundation: (3) relationship to GNU & openness

[Roger B.A. Klorese]

In article <4630 at hoptoad.uucp> gnu at hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes:
>They want to keep this software under corporate control.  They will be
>"open" with each other, not with their customers.

If you honestly believe that platform vendors ought to be freely
distributing their software, source and all, to the user community,
then you have no understanding of (a) what it takes to support the
average customer (and it is the average customer, not the wizard, for
whom support plans should be oriented, despite the history of the
"here-it-is-do-something-with-it-if-you-can" wonder from AT&T) and
(b) exactly how large a portion of systems vendors' income is derived
from software licensing.

>AT&T and Sun have made an effort to make it possible to
>run the same applications software on hundreds of manufacturer's machines.

How have they done this?  I would be happy to see MIPS make its operating
system available to others as a porting base, but I wouldn't delude myself
into yhinking of that as selflessly offering a standard, but as just
another means of growing my revenue base.

>It is a struggle for Sun to stay open as it grows, but so far it seems equal
>to the challenge.

Sun's original attempt at foisting the SPARC ABI on the public as the only
ABI to exist is an illustration of how two-faced this whole issue is.  You
see it as offering an open hardware architecture to the world; I see it as
Sun permitting people to hop on a standard as long as they pay Sun to do it,
and then enter the market with a later, more expensive product.
-- 
Roger B.A. Klorese                           MIPS Computer Systems, Inc.
{ames,decwrl,prls,pyramid}!mips!rogerk  25 Burlington Mall Rd, Suite 300
rogerk at mips.COM                                     Burlington, MA 01803
I don't think we're in toto any more, Kansas...          +1 617 270-0613