Re: General Resolution: Removing non-free
John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> writes:
> 1. Non-free software is no longer an essential or standard part of a
> typical installation.
> Whereas at one time, most everyone used non-free software such as
> Netscape for web browsing, acroread for PDF reading, or xv for graphic
> viewing, there are quality free replacements for all of these
> programs. Therefore, the rationale of "we need non-free for usable
> standard system" no longer applies.
Wrong.
$ vrms
Non-free packages installed on loom
acroread Adobe Acrobat Reader: Portable Document Format file vi
communicator-base-47 Communicator base support for version 4.7
communicator-smotif-47 Netscape Communicator 4.7 (static Motif)
doc-html-w3 Recommendations of the W3
lha lzh archiver
netscape-base-47 4.7 base support for netscape
netscape-java-47 Netscape Java support for version 4.7
unarj arj unarchive utility
xanim Plays multimedia files (animations, pictures, and soun
xsnow Brings Christmas to your desktop
zoo manipulate archives of files in compressed form
- I've seen PDF files that cannot be read by xpdf or gv.
- communicator: Online-Banking via 128bit-SSL, Java
- doc-html-w3: Funny ... it is in non-free because we cannot freely
modify it. OTOH this is one of the major point behind standards ...
- lha, unarj, zoo: What else should I use to unpack bizarre archives?
- xanim: binary modules for AVI
- xsnow ...
> 3. Supporting non-free software gives nothing to Debian.
It makes using Debian for above purposes easier.
Interesting question is what we should do whenever someone volunteers
to package some Staroffice-sized programs. Then non-free software
might start occupying significiant ressources.
Sven
--
Sven Rudolph <sr1@sax.de> http://www.sax.de/~sr1/
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