Re: [SLE] Closed Source on Linux?

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To: suse-linux-e@suse.com
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 15:17:36 -0800

Steven,

On Thursday 17 November 2005 12:04, Steven T. Hatton wrote:
> On Thursday 17 November 2005 02:35 pm, Randall R Schulz wrote:
> > Steven,
> >
> > On Thursday 17 November 2005 10:53, Steven T. Hatton wrote:
> > > ...
> > >
> > > Personally, I don't mind paying Wolfram Research to produce a
> > > powerful product, and feed a handful of talented Mathematicians.
> > > The value WRI returns to the world is far in excess of the money
> > > paid for their products.

He is very aggressive about protecting his so-called intellectual
property, to the point of inhibiting progress in areas he believes he
has claim to. This holds back progress rather than encourages or
contributes to it.

> > Wolfram (the man) is an egotistical
>
> I have that impression. I don't believe his contributions to science
> are quite as unique as he would like to believe. He should certainly
> tip his hat to Douglas R. Hofstadter. Nonetheless, Mathematica is an
> amazing product. I really don't know if any of the other computer
> algebra systems are anything like it. He has full room to be proud
> of his accomplishments.

Wolfram has as much right to be personally proud of Mathematica as Bill
Gates has to be personally proud of Windows. In both cases, they're
managers or executives, not technical contributors (at least not for a
long time, now), so in my book, pride of accomplishment is not
warranted.

> > tyrant who mistreats, abuses and exploits the programmers and
> > mathematicians he hires.
>
> I'm composing an email right now to one of his
> programmer/mathematicians. I'm not about to ask for a comment on
> that subject, but I believe the man is fairly happy to be working for
> Wolfram (both the company, and the man).
>
> > Switch to an alternative. Putting money in his pocket is far worse
> > than feeding Billy boy or any of his hired guns.
>
> Can you provide substance to this accusation? All human beings have
> faults. One, or even a few episodes of bad behavior do not a tyrant
> make. I may be knocking on his door soon.

I have not had personal dealings with him, but I've talked personally to
people who have, and they are exceedingly unflattering and resentful.
The impression is widespread, and so most likely is generally valid.

> WRI have been very generous to me in the past, and I have no reason
> to complain about their business practices.

This makes me curious about who you are or represent, what has been the
nature of Wolfram Research's largesse towards you and / or your
organization and why it was granted.

> ...
>
> > By the way, the same goes for Novell, of course. So far, I'm happy
> > to support them, but it's by no means any kind of unconditional
> > love thing.
>
> I assume you have concluded that I share your postion on this. I
> have no reason to complain about my dealings with Novell over the
> years. That is, until they took a swipe at the KDE. I'm dead
> serious when I say that much of my reason for supporting the KDE for
> the past 7 years (IIRC) is a direct result of my experience with
> Novell products in the Windows NT environment. When I saw that Novell
> execs were double talking about remaining behind KDE development,
> well...

I don't know why you'd assume that. I cannot and do not pretend to know
how you feel about Novell, nor is it more than an aside here. It's just
a parallel to show that similar considerations are in play. That, and
perhaps to allude to the fact that if they depart from the practices
that made SuSE Linux so great, I will seek those qualities elsewhere.

> Steven

Randall Schulz

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