On Sun, Nov 17, 2002 at 08:56:32PM +0100, Emile van Bergen wrote: > > > It's not like developers working on packages in non-free will suddenly > > > stop spending time on packages they use and need themselves and start > > > work on some other packages. > > Some may, others may not. Do you presume to know with certainty the > > mind of every Debian maintainer who packages non-free software? > No. I only know myself a little and a few others a little less and > extrapolate from there. And you? > I'm just not overly optimistic about a sudden conception of new > DFSG-free pine-lookalikes and qmail-workalikes and scilab-compatibles > when *we* *merely* *stop* *maintaining* non-free. > They will be written when people care enough about their restrictiveness > to write them. As said, they don't disappear from the earth when the > Debian Project stops distributing them. That fact in itself will not > provide enough of an "itch" to scratch by developing alternatives. Only > the software and its license can do that. Do you really think otherwise? Against my better judgement, I've begun work on packaging a pine lookalike wrapper script for mutt. By and large, it at least seems to me a more productive use of time than arguing at length about why non-free should Go Away. I'm hypothesizing that there are two main groups of Debian pine users today -- power users who have invested serious effort in customizing and learning pine and are not willing to reinvest that effort in a new mailer, and not-so-power users who have invested their entire quota in learning the basic pine keybindings. ;) I believe the latter group, at least, can be served by a pinealike that implements the straightforward mailer features. As for qmail, having once administered a mailserver based on this horror, my personal view is that our users are best served by removing it from non-free *without* providing a workalike. ;P -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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