Re: Why no Opera?
On Thu August 30 2007 09:52:13 am Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 30, 2007 at 04:47:59PM +0100, Jon Dowland wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 27, 2007 at 10:46:47PM -0600, Bruce Sass wrote:
> > > Of course, obviously---for software where there is a choice, but
> > > for software which can not be built from source because it is
> > > closed or not redistributable once modified (which seems to be
> > > the case with Opera), putting a statically linked version into
> > > the archive sounds like the correct solution.
> >
> > and there's precedent with the netscape communicator packages from
> > the pre-mozilla days. These were statically linked against several
> > things afaik, motif iirc.
>
> Yes, but even though it was done in the past, why on earth should it
> be done today? Back then, there were no alternatives. Today there
> are many.
With Opera it is not necessary because they provide an apt-gettable
archive.
The availability of alternatives isn't always good enough though. In the
case of web browsers, a web designer may want to have all of them
installed so they can check their work with more than just Free
software.
If someone is willing to make and maintain an installer package for a
statically linked non-free binary, simply being statically linked
shouldn't be a good enough reason to keep it out of
packages.debian.org. [which is how I read the original statement I
responded to]
- Bruce
Reply to: