Re: Moving contrib and non-free of master.debian.org
On Tue, Jun 22, 1999 at 08:47:21 -0500, Brian Servis wrote:
> As a user I find it hypocritical to do this without having EVERYTHING that
> Debian uses on it mail servers, web servers, search engines, graphic
> formats, etc. be of DFSG quality.
The Debian project has always been somewhat pragmatical in its use of
non-free software and services where they fulfill a real need. The website
was originally hosted on a Solaris system, for the simple reason that noone
had offered us a Linux system with sufficient bandwith and processing power.
Later, when we got those, we switched it to a Linux system.
Suppose someone offers to host a remote www.[country].debian.org site for
us? Do we need to check them for political correctness?
We still employ SSH and PGP. For SSH, there is no suitable replacement yet
(LSH is currently alpha, and does not yet have something like SSH's
ssh-agent); for PGP, GPG is maturing rapidly; I myself no of no reasons not
to switch to it, though others might.
For the search engine, ht://dig looks promising. I have no experiences in
running large volume mail hosts, so I can't comment whether or not any of
the free MTAs can handle the volume that qmail currently does.
I still feel the pragmatic approach is the best, but for the PGP, glimpse,
and qmail cases, it may be that the time is come to switch to a free
alternative.
Ray
--
POPULATION EXPLOSION Unique in human experience, an event which happened
yesterday but which everyone swears won't happen until tomorrow.
- The Hipcrime Vocab by Chad C. Mulligan
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