Re: All GPL'ed programs have to go to non-free
On Fri, Apr 15, 2005 at 11:58:52AM -0400, Hubert Chan wrote:
>...
> In fact, I've never looked at the gcc documentation other than to look
> up machine-specific options and optimization flags. It's easy to use
> gcc without the documentation.
Simple usage might work, but as soon as you reach any question like e.g.
How do I pass in a additional path to the include path of gcc?
Which optimization levels does gcc support?
Which optimization option is best for my CPU?
you are pretty lost without the documentation.
>...
> Adrian> Until recently, non-free contained only some obscure things most
> Adrian> people didn't require. ...
>
> Such as a graphical web browser, back in the time before mozilla existed
> or was usable. Or acroread (before the security vulnerability, when it
> was decided to just drop it from the archive altogether), or the Flash
> plugin (well, it's in contrib, but only because it downloads the actual
> plugin from the web) or msttcorefonts (also in contrib, for the same
> reason as the Flash plugin). Or giflib. Those are all obscure things.
>...
My point is:
Non-free was going to contain mostly obscure things now that there
are free replacements for Netscape and Acroread.
Debian's steps of moving more and more things into non-free forces many
users to use non-free who wouldn't do otherwise.
Is this effect really wanted?
cu
Adrian
--
"Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
"Only a promise," Lao Er said.
Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed
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