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57 lines
3 KiB
Text
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@unnumbered Special Report: Apple's New Look and Feel
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You might have read about the new look-and-feel copyright lawsuit,
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Apple vs. Hewlett Packard and Microsoft. Apple claims the power to
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stop people from writing any program that works even vaguely like a
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Macintosh. If they and other look-and-feel plaintiffs triumph, they
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will use this new power over the public to put an end to free software
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that could substitute for commercial software.
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In the weeks after the suit was filed, USENET reverberated with
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condemnation for Apple. GNU supporters Richard Stallman, John Gilmore, and
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Paul Rubin decided to take action against Apple's no-longer-deserved
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reputation as a force for progress. Apple's reputation comes from having
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made better computers; but now, Apple is working to make all non-Apple
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computers worse. If this deprives the public of the future work of many
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companies, the harm done would be many times the good that any one company
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does. Our hope was that if the user community realizes how destructive
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Apple's present actions are, Apple would lose customers and have more
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trouble finding employees.
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Our method of action was to print 5000 buttons that say ``Keep Your Lawyers
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Off My Computer'' and hand them out at the West Coast Computer Faire. The
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center of the button shows the rainbow-apple logo with a Gigeresque mouth
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full of ferocious teeth. The picture was drawn by Etienne Suvasa, who also
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drew the cover for the GNU Emacs manual. We call the picture ``Apple's New
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Look and Feel''.
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We gave out nearly 4000 buttons at the show (saving the rest for
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afterwards). The result was a great success: the extent of anger at Apple
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was apparent to everyone at the show. Many of the invited speakers at the
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show wore our buttons, spoke about them, or even waved them from the
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podium. The press noticed this: at least one Macintosh user's magazine
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carried a photo of the button afterwards.
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Some of you may be considering using, buying, or recommending Macintoshes;
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you might even be writing programs for them or thinking about it. Please
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think twice and look for an alternative. Doing those things means more
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success for Apple, and this could encourage Apple to persist in its
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aggression. It also encourages other companies to try similar
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obstructionism.
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[It is because of this boycott that we don't include support for Macintosh
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Unix in GNU software.]
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You might think that your current project ``needs'' a Macintosh now. If
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you find yourself thinking this way, consider the far future. You probably
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plan to be alive a year or two from now, and working on some other project.
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You will want to get good computers for that, too. But an Apple monopoly
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could easily make the price of such computers at that time several times
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what it would otherwise be. Your decision to use some other kind of
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machine, or to defer your purchases now, might make sure that the machines
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your next project needs are affordable when you need them.
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Newspapers report that Macintosh clones will be available soon. If
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you must buy a Macintosh-like machine, buy a clone. Don't feed the
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lawyers!
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