Re: snippets

[Richard Braakman <dark@xs4all.nl>]

On Mon, Sep 29, 2003 at 10:01:19AM -0400, Jeremy Hankins wrote:
> * If the answer to the above is no, should we distribute them anyway,
>   simply because we don't have them in a free form?

Hi.  I think my first reply to this mail didn't get to my actual point.

I think your question here is the wrong way around.  These snippets are
present in the stuff we package.  The question is whether they're worth
removing, not whether they're worth distributing.

What are the advantages of keeping them?

- The time and effort that would be spent on locating and removing them
and maintaining a repackaged source archive can instead be spent on
writing code and fixing bugs.
- We maintain better relations with upstream authors, who presumably
would like their heartrending emails to accompany their work.
- We can keep more source archives pristine.

What are the advantages of removing them?

- We save some bytes in the archive.
- If a snippet turns out to be problematic, we won't have to spend effort
on removing it because we already spent that effort.
- We might convince some authors to write modifiable snippets instead.

I don't see a convincing case here for removing them.

-- 
Richard Braakman

There's still time to save Europe from software patents.
EuropeSwPatentFree - http://EuropeSwPatentFree.internautas.org