non-free packages should document/advise about alternatives
Mark W. Eichin writes:
> 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"...
Requiring this formally will make it impossible for many commercials to
contribute (since you cannot reasonably be required to mention the
competition).
Cheers,
Kristoffer
--
Kristoffer Høgsbro Rose, phd, prof.associé <http://www.ens-lyon.fr/~krisrose>
addr: LIP, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, 46 Allée d'Italie, F-69364 Lyon 7
phone: +33(0)4 7272 8642, fax +33(0)4 7272 8080 <Kristoffer.Rose@ENS-Lyon.FR>
pgp f-p: A4D3 5BD7 3EC5 7CA2 924E D21D 126B B8E0 <krisrose@{debian,tug}.org>
Reply to: