Please never ever reply to me off list. On Friday 28 November 2003 22:57, brett holcomb wrote: > Because I've finally found a distro that works. I've > watched Unix mess up the desktop, been condemmed to use > Windows for years, used Linux and suffered the RPM mess. > I finally found Gentoo which is an almost perfect distro. > It provides a large number of packages, is easy to > install, maintain, and upgrade and allows us choice in > what we want to run. And then people want to Debianize > Gentoo. Yes, they still do - that's not dead by any > means. It shows in some of the comments and in the > attitude of which "immoral licenses" was one I've received > in this thread. It's an attitude that anyone who uses > non-free isn't worth consideration so let a third party > fill in the gaps or they can go elsewhere. Well, we can't. > The free only can always go to Debian - we only can go > back to RPM distros! It appears choice is good as long > it's free-only.
While some people may have that attitude it never makes its way into anything that is released with Gentoo. Do you think this sort of debate has never came up before? > I have no problem with adding license handling being > modified so that all of us can build systems as we desire > and that allow us to do our jobs. I do have a problem > with Gentoo being changed so that we who use non-free > software have to make the changes - why should we. If > someone is that hot to have it change let them make the > changes to their make.conf or whatever file. Yes, even > having to do that change may be a small item but the > camel's nose appeared small when he first shoved it under > the tent. I've said more than I should so I'll just > watch and see what happens. Most new Linux users assume that everything associated with Linux is free. The only reason I can see to have a default of "free-only" licenses is to make sure those users are aware of the agreement under which they're using the software. As well as that, many users who use "non-free" software (myself included) are interested in the terms under which they are using it. Your opinion doesn't sound so much like the free vs. non-free; it sounds like those who care about licensing vs. those who don't. The addition of licensing to Gentoo is in no way related to the free vs. non-free debate; only the defaults is. When the defaults are decided it won't be by a vote on free vs. non-free; it will be decided with valid reasoning as in the above. Until there is (at least some) concensus on that reasoning, the decision will not be finalised. Jason -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
