Re: BGP

[Stephen Zedalis <tintype@exis.net>]

On Tue, 24 Feb 1998, Scott Ellis wrote:

>Nope.  You need to sign a licence to distribute it at all (including in
>non-free) and Debian isn't willing to sign the licence (and you can't just
>have "someone else" sign the licence and then upload it to non-free).

Hmm... Isn't it for things like this that the Debian board was created?
And if the license is free, why don't they want to sign it?  The current
bo distribution has several packages of software that is just as dubious
in licensing and of possibly less usefulness.  merit-radius is just such
an example.  As far as I know it is commercial-ware put out by Merit.
This is starting to smack of the same problems that the various BSD
flavors have, ie. a particular committee slowly making decisions "for the
public good" but seemingly out of touch with users needs.

>> gated is too important to NOT do it at all.
>
>While gated is important, it is more important for Debian to adhere to its
>stated policies and goals which are located at:
>	http://www.debian.org/social_contract.html
>Gated source is out there, if you need it you can compile it and install
>it yourself (or build yourself a Debian package of it for your own use).

Good suggestions, but not having a robust routing daemon is gonna hurt in
the long run for many applications.  If Debian is dead set against gated,
they need to look into incorporating alternatives with less onerous
licensing, and/or supporting the development of alternatives.  Maybe
a "GRD Project", (GNU Routing Daemon) or some similar alternative.  Lets 
face it - routed sucks even for RIP and if we want to do cool things with
IPv4 and IPv6 in the future, a routing daemon is going to be invaluable in
the long run.  Another problem is that the policies of the current Gated
Consortium suck.  They certainly are catering to big business, the only
versions that are available without substantial contributions for source
and distribution rights is the 3.x versions.  And whenever you report a
problem in 3.x, they recommend a newer version.  This is one of those
things that cries for a GPL'd alternative.




--
TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to
debian-user-request@lists.debian.org . 
Trouble?  e-mail to templin@bucknell.edu .