Re: non-free packages should document/advise about alternatives

[eichin@thok.org (Mark W. Eichin)]

> Requiring this formally will make it impossible for many commercials to
> contribute (since you cannot reasonably be required to mention the
> competition).

Umm, I don't see how that follows, actually.  Granted, we're trying to
avoid that the *other* direction, ie. avoid mentioning non-free
"competition" to free tools, but that's a special case,
philosophically; here the idea is that "any time we can give the user
more information, we both win."  I don't recall anything in any
license that prevents the change, for example... can you find any
examples?

I haven't seen any indication that informal mention *wouldn't* be a
good idea; if we can include it in the policy, then we can start
getting maintainers of non-free packages to add the pointers.  I'd
still be more impressed with a more formal pointer, though, so that
tools can tell the user automatically...