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non-free and "cd-ok", again



Sorry to bring this topic up again, I'm very sick of it already.
But reading the GTK-Mozilla thread in ./ I just noticed what's
the point onf people who advocate this.

There are plenty of programs in non-free which have absolutely
no restrictions on distributions; these are in non-free because
either

1: you can't modify it
2: there are restrictions in its use (like, no commercial use)
3: there are no sources

The most notable example is Qt, which I would never use but lots
of people complain about not being able to get in a Debian CD.
Quoting directly from ./, hanord@troll.com said:

>   Wrong. Anybody can redistribute Qt Free Edition on ftp or
>   CD-ROM without paying us, even if they charge a fee. Debian
>   and RedHat are free to putting Qt on their CD-ROMs without
>   paying us a cent. What we require is that Qt is redistributed
>   unmodified and as a whole. People who use Qt to write
>   proprietary software (i.e. not free software) must obtain a
>   Qt Professional Edition.

So basically there is plenty of reson to leave qt out of main,
since this is against the philosofies of Free Software, DFSG and
Debian; but there isn't any reason not to include them in CDs.
If there was a "cd-ok" distribution, people would be able to use
kde from the CD only, without any download. Not that I think
this is a good thing, but lotsa people do. :-)

[]s,
                                               |alo
                                               +----
--
   Howling to the moonlight on a hot summer night...
http://www.webcom.com/lalo      mailto:lalo@webcom.com
                 pgp key in the web page

Free Software Union       --       http://www.fslu.org
Debian GNU/Linux       --        http://www.debian.org


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