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non-free packages should document/advise about alternatives



In a thread on -private about pdf viewers, it was noticed that people
were sometimes unaware of free alternatives to non-dfsg software; the
particular example was acroread (with gv and xpdf as free replacements.)

This suggests an enhancement: non-free packages should perhaps include
(formally? or just in the descriptive text?) explicit mention of free
alternatives. This is a small but I think reasonable burden on the
maintainers of non-free packages.  More sophisticated might be
something that caused dselect (or whatever) to display a page of
possible free alternatives whenever someone selected a non-dfsg app;
this lets us take advantage of acroread's "brand recognition"...

(I won't have time to lead this thread, but if people here could hash
out the idea and come up with some concrete policy enhancements, that
would be nice...)


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