Notice spam
On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 10:16:28PM +0100, Joerg Jaspert wrote:
> Please keep the "free" out of the description(s). Thats already pretty
> clear thanks to the archive it should be uploaded to.
In a vaguely related matter, please join me in mumbling curses towards
advertising clauses like GPL2 3c and GPL3 5d. If I'm running Debian, I
know it well that I'm running Free Software and there's no warranty.
Especially after having a wall of text pushed right in my face on login (by
default), any subsequent notices are not only redundant but also annoying.
And "annoying redundant text" is my definition of spam.
Why I'm mentioning this here, on debian-devel? Because some of you are
copyright holders of pieces of software where you can excise such mindless
notices. And with some other licenses, you don't even need any special
permission to do so.
Imagine a poor blind sod who has to go through the drivel on his Braille
terminal. Or me, having something pushed off the scrollback by "bc"'s junk
from each invocation.
Please, if a package you maintain emits spam like "this is free" or such
when not asked, consider fixing this annoyance.
--
1KB // Microsoft corollary to Hanlon's razor:
// Never attribute to stupidity what can be
// adequately explained by malice.
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