Hamilton Group Announcement

[David Canzi]

In article <233 at mcf.UUCP> shan at mcf.UUCP (Sharan Kalwani) writes:
>They expect to work with established Standarad 
>Organizations, OSF members, Universities and Res. Orgn, and issue
>Newsletters, Spec Docs, Source Code (wow!), and work on
>sublicensing rights.    ^^^^^^ ^^^^

Several years ago, DEC provided source to us for VMS, but only on
microfiche.  You can't grep a microfiche.  IBM has been known to
provide source in the form of assembly language output from the
compiler for their internal language, PL/S.  (They keep the compiler
and the language to themselves.)

A promise to provide source may not be (1) a promise to provide all the
source, or (2) a promise to provide it in a useable (ie. machine
readable) form, or (3) a promise to provide you original source rather
than intermediate files that fit (barely) the definition of source.
Like cpp output, for instance.

And who knows how many other weasely ways there are for them to
disappoint us.  The English language is wonderfully flexible and
ambiguous.  IBM and DEC will keep their promises, but what they have
promised is not necessarily what you *think* they've promised.

-- 
David Canzi	Given its constituency, the only thing I expect to be
		"open" about [the Open Software Foundation] is its
		mouth. -- J. Gilmore