Re: Flavors, Symbolics, and MIT

[mcgeer%ucbkim@Berkeley (Rick McGeer)]

	I have no wish to add fuel to these flames, but I *am* curious.  It
seems to me that the point of Robert Wilensky's note (and the concurring
followups) was that, under law, the software was the property of the authors
and/or the funders (in this case ARPA).  In either case, MIT  has no particular
claim.  If, as mike@rice claims, MIT's current charges to educational
institutions merely reflect "the realities of software development" - meaning
presumably restitution for the costs of such development, then it seems to
me that the benefits should devolve upon those who bore the cost, namely
the people of the United States.  I may be missing something, but  I am
unaware of any costs incurred by MIT in the production of MACSYMA.
	In any case, I had not heard that MIT was a software house, concerned
with software development or the realities thereof.  Last time I looked, it
was a university, concerned with research and the dissemination of knowledge.