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Re: sources.list question



On Sat, Feb 09, 2002 at 05:51:17PM -0800, Patrick Kirk wrote:
> [snip]
> 
> > I remember pine is only available as source due to licensing issue and
> > removed from binary distribution.  If I were desparate, I might download
> > source package and compile.  (Which I believe comes with pico.)
> > 
> > But, I will recommend you to move to "mutt" if you used "pine" or 
> > "elm".  As for "pico", install "nano".
> > 
> so what is non-free for if it doesn't cover things like pine?  
> 
> Nano is fine btw - I'm just asking out of curiosity now.

Sometime ago there was a feverish discussion why pine can't be in 
non-free as binary. It turns out that the license of pine prohibits
distribution of a binary that was produced as a result of changing 
the source code. For a debian package to exist, we must add
at least /debian directory in the source together with all the 
dependencies in there. This is a change to the source code. So we 
can't distribute the binary...

You can get the sources, go into the pine
source directory, type "debian/rules binary" and you'll end
up with .deb of pico and pine in the parent directory.

IMO, it's stupid for pine to have a license like that but
that's life. I don't use it any more. I find mutt to have
more features I like :)

Regards,
Adam



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