Re: why not replace individual programs?
Hello!
I'm not hardly following the thread, somebody probably already
mentioned this, anyway: stop trying to find replaces for propietary
software as a reason for not supporting it. We'll never be completely
free of propietary software. We'll get more propietary software in
the future, and, sorry to say, open source will never be head to head in
the race. There will be great ideas that will emerge as commercial or
closed products, and we cannot expect to have an open source clone
every time that happens.
I'm not in favor of propietary software, I just think this argument is
useless. I say, if closed software is a problem to the developers,
coordinators or whatever in means of waste of resources (time,
disk-space, whatever), then I don't see the point of argue in stop
supporting it. People involved in propietary projects MUST take care
of the support of THEIR clients. Let them invest THEIR time,
disk-space, or whatever. There're a lot of fields where Debian is
failing, and supporting closed software shouldn't be one of them.
I think that if Debian becomes a great distribution and fulfills its
missing stuff, then it'll have support directly from the interested
parties, much like what's happening with RedHat.
Indeed, I think you guys should focus in what is best for the
distribution. If propietary software damages in any way the
distribution, just remove it (or move it, but if you do this I don't
see the point of so much argue).
My 0.1 cents, FWIW.
Pablo.
Radovan Garabik <garabik@atlas13.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk> writes:
> On Mon, Jun 12, 2000 at 04:13:08PM +0200, Goswin Brederlow wrote:
> > >>>>> " " == Christian Surchi <christian@firenze.linux.it> writes:
> >
> > > On Sat, Jun 10, 2000 at 06:30:10PM +0200, David N. Welton
> > > wrote:
> > ...
> > > Maybe popularity-contest could help us. We know that pine and
> > > netscape are very important. Mozilla exists, but what about
> > > pine? It si possible to "muttify" pine, but is this enough?
> >
> > Is popularity-contest in any task package? It should be installed (or
> > the user should be queried if its ok to be installed) on mail capable
> > systems. Far to less users know of it I think.
>
> perhaps MTAs should suggest it
>
> >
> > > Here a list of non-free software and possibile free
> > > alternatives:
> >
> > > * acroread -> xdpf or xpdf-i
> > Not yet.
>
> you can use gv. It has its limitations though
>
> >
> > > * pgp -> gnupg (even if to handle older keys we need idea and
> > > rsa modules that are not free)
> > Isn't the patent running out soon?
> >
> > > * application made with xforms: xfmail -> there is archimedes,
> > > clone in gtk, but not usable now
> > anyone using it? What does the popularity contest say about it?
> >
> > > lyx -> ?
> > klyx?
>
> from lyx page:
> KLyX is still beta, while LyX is stable.
>
> and lyx is aming at toolkit independence, so things may improve in
> the future (it is taking a bit longer than expected though).
>
>
> >
> > > * mpeg players: we have smpeg-gtv, so can we avoid ucbmpeg or xanim?
> > I've used mpeg_encode regulary in the lost months. Just for that
> > ucbmpeg is needed.
>
> I have videos where smpeg does not recognise sound in them
>
> >
> > > * other video players, I think no alternatives, only xanim with its
> > > modules
>
> ..
>
> >
> >
> > As a conclusion one can only say, we need non-free.
> >
>
> no matter how some people do not like the idea, you are right
>
>
> --
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> | Radovan Garabik http://melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk/~garabik/ |
> | __..--^^^--..__ garabik @ melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk |
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