Re: [DotGNU]DotGNU Manifesto - Draft Version 0.3

[Rhys Weatherley]

On Tuesday 15 April 2003 09:30 pm, James Michael DuPont wrote:
> --- Chris Smith <address@hidden> wrote:

> > Nicely put.
>
> And way off the mark.
> At this moment the Dotgnu system is only usable by developers. There
> are no products that could be used by anyone.

Rome wasn't built in a day and all that.  You could conceivably say the same 
about Microsoft's .NET implementation - lots of infrastructure, but few real 
apps as yet.  It will come.  Java was the same for the first few years of its 
existence (heck, it could be argued that Java still lacks decent 
user-oriented applications).  It will be somewhat difficult to build the 
"products" you speak of if we have no way to compile and run them!

> I think that it is a mistake to close the door to non-free
> customization and support of the dotgnu.

Please re-read the FSF philosophy section.  It isn't in our job description to 
make it easy for non-free vendors to continue using and building software 
incorrectly.  If they don't want to join the Free Software party and provide 
customization and support in a manner compatible with the GPL, it's their 
loss when FS takes over (just ask the proprietry C compiler vendors, or the 
proprietry Unix vendors, or ...).

> In fact, the lacking of any obvious industry support is just a symptom
> of this thought pattern.

There are plenty of non-free companies that are hurting for industry support 
right now as well.  It's called an "economic downturn".  DotGNU is much 
better positioned to survive such a downturn because it isn't affected by the 
economics of paying employees, keeping an office, etc.

Or would you rather have DotGNU compromise its principles and screw the 
community for the first vendor that comes along with a fat check?

Cheers,

Rhys.