Re: The "Free" vs. "Non-Free" issue
On Tue, Jan 06, 2004 at 06:13:58PM -0500, Raul Miller wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 06, 2004 at 05:00:44PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote:
> > Of course, the problem is that there are always more non-free packages
> > to be uploaded. When first I proposed the elimination of non-free,
> > there was much whining about Netscape. Now I hear much whining about
> > Japanese PDFs.
>
> This is bad, why?
I think it has something to do with fonts being non-free.
> > Perhaps a logical place to start is, effective immediately, completely
> > and totally ban the introduction of any new package into non-free.
>
> And your basis for this is the document of which the DFSG is part of?
>
> Out of curiosity, what were your reasons for supporting a non-free
> package?
To be completely honest, I do not recall. I think I found it useful for
a little while, but lost interest in it almost immediately afterwards.
There were more than one package, actually. One was whirlgif, which at
the time was the only tool to make animated GIFs. I don't recall its
history very well, but I think it started out in main but then moved to
non-free when the whole Unisys patent thing came up. The other was
bulkmail, but again, I don't remember much about it. Both have far
better alternatives these days.
-- John
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