Re: Any UNIX users out there?

["Steven J. Owens" <puff -at- NETCOM -dot- COM>]

     Somebody asked about DTP solutions on "free" Unix flavors.  I've
never used one myself, but I've heard KOffice is decent.  It wasn't a
techwriter who told me, though, so I can't comment on how decent.  He
did say it uses a "framemaker-ish metaphor", though.

     Somebody else asked if FrameMaker wasn't available for Linux:

Geoff Lane (geoff -at- gjctech -dot- force9 -dot- net) replied:
> I asked Adobe the same question when I set up my computers to dual boot
> Linux/Windows.  They gave me a list of supported UNIX flavours.  This didn't
> include all the commercial versions, let alone the various flavours of
> Linux.

     Supporting all the commercial flavors of Unix is a herculean
effort.  I know; I used to work for a company that released its
software on 28 different flavors of Unix, not to mention a couple
flavors of Vax/VMS, OSF/Alpha, etc, ad nauseam.  And we *still* didn't
get them all.

     Sometimes supporting a platform can be more trouble than it's
worth.  Frame on SGI was fairly buggy when I used it, due in part to
some of the funky memory architecture some SGI machines use.  At one
point we were shipping tape archives of dozens of core files off to
SGI on a monthly basis.  I don't think that problem ever really went
away; we moved over to Frame on Solaris and stopped having to deal
with it.

> If you had access to the source code, you could probably pass this
> through the GNU compiler to create a working Frame for Linux.
> However, Adobe won't release the source code.  Worse, if Adobe were
> to use the GNU compiler to produce Frame for Linux, the GNU Public
> License would require them to release the source code.

     Whoa!  I think you're a bit off here.  Let's check www.gnu.org:

          Under the GNU GPL, any modified version of GCC, any program
          that contains any of the code of GCC, must be released as
          free software--to do otherwise is copyright infringement.

          It is permissible to compile non-free programs with
          GCC. Compiling a program with GCC and distributing the
          binary does not require you to make the program free
          software or release its source code. This is because the
          run-time library included with GCC comes with special
          permission to link it with your compiled programs without
          restriction. The legal rules for using the output from GCC
          are the determined by the program that you are compiling,
          not by GCC.

          -- http://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/gcc.html#gpl

     The key issue of the GPL is that anybody who _modifies_ GPLed
code has to contribute those modifications to the same community that
provided the code to begin with.  The idea is to keep somebody from
modifying the code and then selling it as proprietary.  True, with a
compiler there are nuances with respect to linking in compiled
objects, that would otherwise cause this to come into effect for
compiled programs, but the GCC has specific exceptions in the GPL to
prevent this from being a problem.

     Sorry for making a fuss over it, but fighting this misperception
is a major issue in the GNU world - too many companies are reluctant to
use the excellent GCC compiler because of fear of "infecting" their
proprietary source code with the GPL.

     Regardless, Adobe is still unlikely to release the source, since
that would mean they'd have to count on ethical behavior - or invest a
lot of energy in investigations & lawsuits - to prevent people from
pirating it.  And most companies just can't live with that kind of
trust.

Steven J. Owens
puff -at- netcom -dot- com

 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=