Re: How free does a non-free package have to be?
Steve Langasek <vorlon@netexpress.net> writes:
[...]
> > Personally, BTW, I would really, really prefer to maintain Free
> > Software, not *only* for political reasons but also because a
> > commercial vendor is obviously the least responsive upstream you can
> > have. And also, not having access to the source really sucks badly
> > (even if for non-hackers like me)!
>
> > You suggested considering alternatives. So far I haven't heard of any
> > free-as-in-freedom virus scanner, let alone a production-quality
> > one. Did I miss something? If yes, please let me know!
>
> Have you looked at the packages amavis-ng and clamav? I've heard good
> things about these DFSG-free virus tools, but haven't tried them yet
> myself.
[...]
amavis is already in Debian. It needs a third party virus scanner to
work. Also clamav is already in Debian. (I never heard of it
before.). So now I can choose either to abandon my one and only Debian
package or to continue supporting non-free software, although a free
alternative is in development.
I just visited the clamav home page. They say they are using virus
data from openantivirus.org (of which I never heard before.). At
OpenAntivirus.org they refer to their own software as Alpha quality. I
don't know if this applies to both binaries and virus data.
Well, I'm quite surprised that such an initiative as openantivirus.org
exists. I thought we would need production-quality viruses for
GNU/Linux first. But both under openvirus.org and freevirus.org I get
a "host not found". Hey folks, we're lagging behind! How can GNU/Linux
ever become ready for the desktop like that? ;-)
Johannes
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