Re: freedomization task list [was: Re: Dangerous precedent being set - possible serious violation of the GPL]
Good point,
I just regularly hear people complaining about various package uploads to
make "minor" changes causing people to have to download .deb files again
in order to keep up with the packages. This probably is more a Debian
package system specific issue than it is directly related to this thread,
though. And even then is probably only a reflection of the desire of many
Debian users to run "unstable" more than should really be necessary if Debian
had a shorter release-cycle. It's also one of the tradeoffs in having files
in packages the way we do, also.
Of course, unless you *must* have the bugfixes, you don't have to download
the new .deb's, and there are certainly other alternatives (rsync) and ways
a clever admin/user can get around having to download the whole package.
Perhaps it's a moot point -- if someone who has to pay per KB wants to jump
in here and defend this argument, feel free. I don't personally have to pay
for bandwidth that way, so I'm convinced after thinking about it that since
it doesn't affect me, I won't worry about it.
I had been a Pine user in the past, but I used emacs as the editor. I've
switched to mutt and vim, and things are generally faster for me and the
learning curve wasn't that steep. And quite honestly, it was the Debian
project's placement of Pine in non-free and the resulting learning of what
their licensing really said that motivated me to learn something new. Until
using Debian, I didn't really even think about the licensing issues of free
software very much. Naievete, I suppose.
For those working on free clones of these popular tools, I salute you!
Free software is always better than software encumbered with non-free licenses, of course.
Nate, nate@natetech.com
On Thu, Dec 09, 1999 at 12:01:48AM -0700, Richard Stallman wrote:
> They'll notice it when they're paying charges to download it over a phone line
> in Europe or many other areas of the world.
>
> That is important for people who want to download the system. But
> most users in Europe don't do that. The complete GNU/Linux system is
> much larger than Emacs, and yet these users manage to have it running.
> They must have managed to do this without downloading the system.
>
> If they can get all the rest of Debian without downloading it,
> they should be able to get Emacs without downloading it.
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