Re: Dangerous precedent being set - possible serious violation of the GPL
On Wed, Dec 01, 1999 at 11:24:52PM -0700, Richard Stallman wrote:
> infolved did bring up my original objection---that removing the suggests
> will make it harder for people to find things like "gimp-nonfree" (which
> is IMO badly named considering that the contents of the package are
> completely free--unless you live in the drain-bamaged US where LZW is
> patented and Unisys wants to make a fast buck off GIF files..)
>
> You are entirely right that programs prohibited by patents
> in some countries should not be treated like programs
> restricted by their authors.
>
> gimp-nonfree should be renamed and reclassified as a free non-us
> package.
>
I think such a change in classification would require a change in Debian
policy. I, for one, endorse such a change. However, I can't speak for all of
Debian.
--
Brian Ristuccia
brianr@osiris.978.org
bristucc@nortelnetworks.com
bristucc@cs.uml.edu
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