Re: Tax writeoff for Open Source Developers?

[Dan Strychalski <dski@ms17.hinet.net>]

I wrote --

> I can [think of an OSS browser with features competitive with NS/IE/etc.]

Sujal Shah <sujal@worldnet.att.net> responded --

> I should've expected that from you. :-)

Gee, I can't imagine why.  :-)  :-)

In case anyone needs reminding, the main, overriding criterion by which I
judge any piece of software is whether it provides a way for me to keep
my hands on my keyboard's character block (which includes Ctrl) and my
eyes on the screen or any material I might be working from. This is
always concern numero uno. Since thirty-two of the typing keys can double
as command keys, there is never any reason not to provide this
capability. In my view, software that doesn't provide it is not worth
considering.

(Why am I so obsessed with this? It might be because when I came to
computers, all the rest -- electronic editing, storage, retrieval,
display, formatting, printing, you name it -- was already old hat to me,
and this struck me as by far the most valuable capability that computers
provided. And then it disappeared, despite being enormously popular. And
all indications are that William Henry Gates III manipulated an entire
industry to kill it. Because it is based on a formal, non-proprietary
standard. But I digress. Shamelessly. Again.)

All the software I've seen that meets this criterion runs in MS/PC/DR DOS
and/or Un*x. That's a feature ;-). And it's small, fast, customizable,
flexible, and easy to learn and use (it almost invariably has drop-downs,
or better yet, as-you-work on-screen help). Those are features. I've
spoken about how it seems to be kind to the tendons and nerves in my
wrists; it is also kind to the eyes, or can easily be made so. (I'll take
a 25-by-80 low-white-on-dark display any day. I do. All day. Every day.
My screen is not a storefront.) Then there are the advantages of being
able to use batch files and scripts and, in Un*x, run these programs in
the background and/or in concurrent sessions. Not to mention cron jobs
and other features I haven't even tried yet....

> I don't think there's a graphical one, is there?  (this is
> semi-serious... I can't actually think of one)

DOSLynx was semi-graphical -- it had an integrated HGC/EGA/CGA/VGA-
compatible GIF viewer -- in the alpha stage, which unfortunately it
didn't get much beyond. Bobcat, an adaptation of Lynx for MS/PC/DR DOS,
has been distributed from the start with helper apps for viewing bitmaps
and playing sounds; I haven't checked out what the most recent version
comes with. There is an all-graphical MS/PC/DR-DOS-based browser
(Arachne), and there are other all-or-mainly text-mode ones, among them
Minuet, which I understand has some kind of graphics capability, and
Net-Tamer, which I know less about but see many people using. One place
to find out about these is <http://www.agate.net/~tvdog/internet.html>.

> Whether you like the GUI or not, you have to admit it pushed web use
> forward dramatically.

Yeah, so dramatically that even Bill Gates had to wake up and throw
together something that would let others enjoy the kind of connectivity
he'd had for years. Remember what Clay Shirky writes about the
pre-Navigator Internet at <http://www.shirky.com/Articles/evolve.html>:

   In the early '90s, Internet population was doubling annually, and the
   most serious work on new protocols was being done to solve the biggest
   problem of the day, the growth of available information resources at a
   rate that outstripped anyone's ability to catalog or index them. [...]

That fits with the impression I had when I got on in late 1994. I liked
Gopher more than Lynx at the time, and I went WILD with it. My co-workers
soon got graphical WWW clients, but I stuck with the text-mode apps on
the server -- not out of dislike for the concept of a GUI, I should note,
but because of long-running, deep-seated suspicion toward the particular
GUI available to me. Developers don't pull keystroke assignments out of a
hat or choose them by rolling dice; there's a philosophy behind each set
of assignments, and all of Microsoft's assignments SCREAMED at me that
the company was up to no good. (WordPerfect Corp.'s assignments scream at
me that that "no good" included dictating to other companies.)

> Also, does lynx do SSL?  Even without the graphics, I think that's
> important.

Believe it or not, I can see that it is.

For many people on freenets and in less affluent parts of the world, Lynx
is simply the only browser available. The Lynx developers are acutely
conscious of this, and they are wary of getting embroiled in licensing,
copyright, and legal troubles. (They are also 100% committed to following
IETF and W3C standards to the letter.) I didn't understand the issue well
at the time, but for a while SSL and related matters were a topic of
extensive discussion on Lynx-dev, the Lynx developers' mailing list.

At one point I helped a blind subscriber to Lynx-dev find a plug-in for
doing secure transactions with Lynx (it turned out to be in hidden files
on FTP sites all over the world). I was under the impression that it
worked, but I didn't follow up on it and I don't remember the details.
I've drifted away from Lynx-dev (mainly to be closer to the main front
here), and neither of my ISPs has upgraded to a new version of Lynx in
two years, so I don't know the current situation in detail, but I can
offer the following quotes and links:

   Lynx is capable of... using SSL and the HTTPS and SNEWS services via
   replacement files or patch files for the general distribution.
                         <http://www.slcc.edu/lynx/release2-8-1/ssl.html>

   A good example is an archive in the U.K., from which cryptographically
   enabled versions of the Apache-SSL WWW server, the Lynx WWW browser,
   the SSH Secure Shell program, and other useful software are available.
   This archive may be found [or not found -- DS] at ftp://ftp.relay.com.
                            <http://www.m-tech.ab.ca/download/links.html>

   Linkname: SSLeay: SSLeay and SSLapps FAQ
      <http://drachma.varner.com/~mpearce/ssl.html#Lynx with SSL support>

   I'm trying to [do this edssl stuff] without... special patches....
          <http://archive.redhat.com/blinux-list/1998-February/0036.html>
   It works about 50% of the time.
          <http://archive.redhat.com/blinux-list/1998-February/0035.html>
   ...the cert*.* files... need to be where lynx can find them...
          <http://archive.redhat.com/blinux-list/1998-February/0033.html>
   ...perhaps it may be possible to fake those checks out...
          <http://archive.redhat.com/blinux-list/1998-February/0032.html>
   ...wasn't sure they would... force you to use the windows browsers....
          <http://archive.redhat.com/blinux-list/1998-February/0031.html>

> What's more amusing to me is that once again, Brett has realized that
> his arguments fall short, and isn't responding. ;-)

Perhaps. Please try to understand that those of us not actually out in
the trenches *doing* OSS have a *lot* of trouble understanding the
concept. Brett has said much that makes sense to me (and much I'm not
sure of). Uninvolved people might find things like the Berkeley license
easier to understand and accept, if only proponents of those arrangements
made half as much noise as Richard "Backspace=Help" (*ptooey!*) Stallman.

Dan
dski@ms17.hinet.net (HiNet Mail Server #17, running tcsh on SunOS 5.6 :-)
^Kx