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Re: Debian folly?



----- Original Message -----
From: "Sandip Bhattacharya" <sandipb@xxxxxxxxxxx>

> Hi!
> I just watched a Debian install some days back ... Just curious about one
> thing.

Only one?  Drat, we have to make it more cryptic ;-)

> Pine/Pico was missing from the install and the CD , and some bit of
> documentation told me to refer to the "Policy manual" for it. Of
> course, I had better things to do.
>
> What I wanted to know was, why Pine/Pico was missing and Netscape was
> not?

The Pine licence does not allow Distribution of a modified Source or Binary.
To integrate into Debian, we have to patch a few things, like location of
mail spool (/var/spool/mail , not /var/mail), etc.  There is also the issue
of the post-install scripts.

What is available, under non-free , is
    pine-src
    pine-diff

Download both source .deb, and run
    debian/rules binary
which will make a binary .deb that you can install.  However, respecting
UniWashington's licence, please do not pass this on to other people.

This is slightly different from the Debian-kde1 controversy.  In general,
expect Debian to be respectful/extremist in licencing issues.  After all,
new members are required to swear by the Debian Social Contract and the
Debian Free Software Guidlines, and are actually quizzed on them.

BTW, there is a DFSG-compliant pico clone, called nano.  Available in
Debian.

Regards,

-- Sanjeev "what, no name-calling in this mail" Gupta

>
> - Sandip
>
> --
> -------------------------------------
> Sandip Bhattacharya
> sandipb @ bigfoot.com
> http://www.sandipb.net
> -------------------------------------
>
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