On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 03:10:11AM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote: > On Thu, 8 Jan 2004 14:32:42 -0600, John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> said: > > > On Sat, Jan 03, 2004 at 11:31:13PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote: > >> Hey, if a DFSG free equivalent of tome is available, I'll > >> migrate. (Branden: saying that nethack exists, and is a replacement > >> for tome is like saying that gopher was an adequate alternative for > >> http). > > > Ahh, you should know better than to spit upon Gopher :-) > > > Gopher software distribution for UNIX Copyright (C) 1991-2000 > > University of Minnesota Copyright (C) 2000-2002 John Goerzen and the > > gopher developers > > > Seriously, you will likely find people that make a serious argument > > that Gopher was, and even is, an adequate alternative for HTTP (for > > at least some purposes). And, I wouldn't be devoting my time to > > maintaining Gopher and PyGopherd if I didn't believe that was, at > > least sometimes, the case. > > You make my point well. Personally, even though I maintained > Gopher pages for my department for a couple of years back then, I > have no use for them now -- but I acknowledge that you, and te users > of your packages, derive value from that protocol. Whose subjective determinations of the utility of a package in non-free should be controlling? Moreover, if the utility of a packaged work is a subjective thing, why should it be the most important factor determining the retention of a policy to distribute such things? Does it make more sense to ground our package distribution policies on less potentially controversial criteria? Similarly, when we did we last use anyone's notion of utility as a criterion for inclusion in main? -- G. Branden Robinson | I had thought very carefully about Debian GNU/Linux | committing hara-kiri over this, but branden@debian.org | I overslept this morning. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Toshio Yamaguchi
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