Am 18.11.2011 18:51, schrieb Robert T. Short: > I understand that. If it isn't available from the website, at the > very least it creates an obstacle to using it, and therefore is a > suppression of freedom. A nonfree (sub)repository is a perfect > place to give users access to stuff that may be useful even though > it doesn't meet the standards of "freedom". I really can't see that > there is any harm whatever. > > Michele Martone wrote: >> On 20111117@13:44, Robert T. Short wrote: >> >>> If I understand correctly, the idea here is that including a >>> wrapper that allows a user to access non-free software is >>> somehow a bad thing. However, if you don't allow the wrapper >>> users are NOT able to access the non-free software. This seems >>> to infringe on the user's right to choose and therefore is a >>> suppression of freedom. >>> >>> Just a thought. >>> >>> Bob >>> >> Bob, they were discussing whether to host the wrapper in the >> octave-forge repositories; not whether to allow or deny the wrapper >> use. May I add a point of view about that as a simple user of octave and octave-forge: I think it is perfectly reasonable if a company adds a wrapper to a free software even if their own software is non-free, but in my opinion such a wrapper package should be hosted on the site of the vendor of the non-free software. There are several reasons why I think this, where one reason is simply a practical point of view and I will leave out my philosophical considerations here: Such a package is an addon to the proprietary software and as such makes no sense without it, so as a customer I would expect to find it where the software I buy comes from and not from anywhere else. Beside that, if I find somewhere on some webpage such a wrapper software it is not directly clear that it is something produced by the original vendor from which I buy my proprietary software.
>From that I think it is better for both, the project which hosts and provides free software due to more philosophical reasons (to which I agree in most cases) as well as the vendor of the proprietary software due to practical reasons. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. IT sense. And common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-novd2d _______________________________________________ Octave-dev mailing list Octave-dev@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/octave-dev
