[TUHS] man Macro Package and pdfmark

[Larry McVoy]

On Tue, Feb 18, 2020 at 08:28:50AM -0700, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:
> Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> 
> > ditroff was always >>open source<< and any licensee could get it and see
> > it.  The problem you are suggesting is that it was not >>free<< i.e. FOSS.
> 
> I don't like your use of "open source"; it is way out of skew with
> how it's used today.
> 
> > AT&T licensed it with a small set of fees.   IIRC $1K for the first CPU, an
> > $50 for each and redistribution license was $10K and $5/system.
> 
> That was very painful for universities and/or small businesses. Sure
> Sun and Masscomp could afford that. Your average computing center / 
> computer science department / startup would have to think twice or thrice.
> 
> Per CPU licensing was particularly painful if you had a bunch
> of workstations.

Yeah, Clem sort of has a blind spot on licensing.  It's weird because I
agree with him on almost everything, it's sort of spooky how much we
agree.

My guess is that Clem was always at a University or a job where the fees
were mouse nuts and so it appeared to him that things just worked.  If
you were a grad student like me, who wanted roff on a PC, it was very
different.  And I suspect Clem has always been seen as one of the 
chosen few who get logins on the machines with source.  I was a nobody
and had to fight hard to get a login, I got it, but not until I was a
junior.