Subject: Re: Cygnus Cygwin32 Press Release 1/21/97
From: [email-masked] (Jim Balter)

14 Feb 1997 03:27:22 -0800
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Original-To: Stan Shebs <[email-masked]>
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Stan Shebs wrote:
> 
>    Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 16:45:44 -0800
>    From: Jim Balter <[email-masked]>
> 
>    > True enough, this is a change from past practices.  We've also
>    > switched to bringing in $20M/year instead of $1k/month. :-) Cygnus is
>    > just a business, and we have to adapt our strategy to what makes the
>    > most sense businesswise.
> 
>    But Cygnus didn't start out doing "what makes the most sense
>    businesswise", they started out with RMS' premise that
>    it was possible to make "enough" money supporting free software.
> 
> Companies that don't pay attention to business don't last long.

The point was "most".  If you want to make the *most* money,
you act unethically.  Yet ethical companies survive.  (I'm not saying
that Cygnus is unethical, this is just the extreme.)  Your translating
this into "pay attention to business" is, again, specious.  You can
"pay attention to business" with doing "what makes the most sense
businesswise".  The latter often includes things like busting
unions, polluting rivers, and bribing politicians the small amount
that it takes to avoid prosecution.

>    Perhaps Cygnus would be
>    willing to put such contributions under the LGPL at the authors'
>    request?
> 
> It would depend on the situation, but it would have to be a pretty
> amazing contribution to be worth that much trouble.

Ok, I guess that answers my question enough to guide my actions.
I'll be retaining ownership to any improvements I make to
cygwin.

> It's already in use in "commercial markets", namely, there are a bunch
> of Cygnus customers happily using cygwin32 GCC.  You can go and
> tell them that they're using something that's not ready yet, but
> you might get some quizzical looks...

You seem to make a point of missing the point.  It is cygwin.dll,
not GCC, that isn't commercial quality.  Which is not even to say
that software that depends upon cygwin.dll is not commercial quality;
it is quite possible to write commercial quality software that uses
buggy code.  Perhaps you should review the problems posted to this
mailing list to get a sense of what sorts of problems cygwin.dll has,
as an entity in and of itself, as purportedly a POSIX implementation.

>    And what about this "POSIX" claim in the press release?
>    Have you obtained the certification that gives you the right to make
>    the claim?
> 
> I've talked to the marketeers about that - although the original has
> some weasel words,

  "Cygnus Solutions announces a preview release of cygwin32--the
most       complete C and C++ POSIX development environment for
WindowsNT."

The only weaseling there is that the preview release isn't the
product itself, but that isn't enough.  It isn't POSIX, and you can't
say it is.

> they've agreed to put together a better statement
> about what we're supporting.  (I wanted to say "the parts of POSIX
> that are actually useful", but that was considered unpolitic...)

Aside from being unpolitic, it is uninformed.  But go ahead, say that
to people in the market for a POSIX environment and see how they
respond.

--
<J Q B>
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