Re: About the GPL
On Mon, Aug 31, 1998 at 10:40:49PM +0200, Michael Bramer wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 31, 1998 at 04:23:28PM -0400, Avery Pennarun wrote:
> > I _never_ want source CD's (they go out of date too quickly to be
> > useful) so I'm very glad that clause is in there.
>
> I don't understand!
>
> The binary go out of date too quickly, not the source. You can make from
> the source the binary and make the source with a little patch (diff-file)
> up to date. The binary must you download as a big tar-ball and you can't
> change, can't fix bugs, can't learn, can't ...
After living with Slackware for too many years, I got pretty sick of
compiling everything from source. Sure, I still compile _lots_ of things
from source (and develop some of my own) but I prefer to just install the
Debian binaries when they're available.
I do download source packages when I want to do some hacking, but then I
always want the very latest, to make sure the bugs I'm hacking haven't
already been fixed. By the time I get around to that, my CD is always
outdated.
It's important to have source CD's, of course, but there's no need to
absolutely require everyone to have a source CD.
Disclaimer: I have become extremely biased since I got my cable modem last
week. :)
Have fun,
Avery
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