Re: afbackup now nearly GPL-ed

[Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au>]

On Mon, 2 Feb 1998, Albert Fluegel wrote:

> Ok, you won (at least, you think, you did).  No more restrictions on
> version 2.11 or higher.
>
> ftp://ftp.sbs.de/pub/tools/afbackup/afbackup-2.11.tar.gz

that's great to hear. afbackup is an excellent program and i'm glad it
can now go in the debian main distribution.

> But, when i find the time, i'll explain to you, why IMHO the DFSG,
> section 6 only theoretically provides more equality to all possible
> users, but in the *real world*, we are unfortunately living in, it
> works in fact for a certain huge and rich company starting with M.
>
> Hint: I heard important and decision-making people (even
> project-leaders) enthusiastically saying things like>:  "Windows-NT
> supports the bash !" "Microsoft supports TCL/TK !!!" ...

yes, that's one way of looking at it, and there is certainly truth to it.

another, possibly more useful, way of looking at it is that it is a
"foot in the door" for free software.  How are MS junkies supposed to
learn about the stability and usefulness (and superiority!) of free
software if they can't make a gradual transition from MSlavery to
software freedom?

it can start with installing things like bash and tcl/tk and afbackup
until one day the hapless NT network admin wakes up and realises that
a large percentage of their system is running on high-quality free
software....and that free software happens to run faster and better on
a unix.  So instead of having a half-arsed unix wannabe they may as
well set up a little linux box to experiment with moving some server
functions off their heavily overloaded NT machine(s).

the philosophy of free software is, in some ways, a "memetic virus".
ports to inferior operating systems like NT are a very handy infection
route for new people to catch the free-software bug.

to (mis-)quote linus: 
	 "world domination! fast!"

:-)

craig

--
craig sanders


--
TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to
debian-devel-request@lists.debian.org . 
Trouble?  e-mail to templin@bucknell.edu .