Re: Pine for Debian
At Sat, 22 Feb 2003 23:22:10 -0500,
Ian Pushee wrote:
>
> This isn't specificly a ppc-debian issue, but hopefuly someone will have
> some insite... I am trying to install the PINE mail/news reader on my
The issue is that the way pine is licensed. As I understand it you
can re-distribute pine binaries, and you can re-distribute pine source
code, but you cannot re-distributed modifications to the pine source
code without express permission from the University of Washington.
This disqualifies pine as being "free software" as defined by the DFSG
(Debian Free Software Guidelines).
Now, you may wonder how a company like Red Hat includes Pine? The
answer is Red Hat as an exclusive agreement that allows them to
redistribute modified source code copies of Pine. So why doesn't
Debian get a similar agreement? The answer is again the DFSG, which
states:
"8. License Must Not Be Specific to Debian
The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program's
being part of a Debian system. If the program is extracted from Debian
and used or distributed without Debian but otherwise within the terms
of the program's license, all parties to whom the program is
redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in
conjunction with the Debian system."
I really wish that the pine authors would reconsider their license and
release it as free software. I've heard rumors that Red Hat is
considering removing pine from the next release of Red Hat, hopefully
that will get their attention.
At any rate, try mutt. It is GPL free, and chock full of nice
features.
Reply to: