>>>>> "Adrian" == Adrian Bunk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Adrian> On Fri, Apr 15, 2005 at 02:22:11PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
[...]
>> The fact that we can remove the documentation and still distribute
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> the software demonstrates that it isn't an unavoidable requirement.
s/still distribute/still legally distribute/
License text is legally required. Documentation is not.
Adrian> The question remains whether a gcc or MySQL without
Adrian> documentation is of any practical value.
I don't know about MySQL, since I've never used it. But gcc is still
useful for compiling packages from source, and you don't need to look at
the documentation for that; just run dpkg-buildpackage.
In fact, I've never looked at the gcc documentation other than to look
up machine-specific options and optimization flags. It's easy to use
gcc without the documentation.
Even in the case of MySQL, I'm sure that some packages that use it or
depend on it will tell you exactly what you need to do to set it up so
that it's usable to that package. Or they may even do the setup for
you.
[...]
Adrian> Until recently, non-free contained only some obscure things most
Adrian> people didn't require. ...
Such as a graphical web browser, back in the time before mozilla existed
or was usable. Or acroread (before the security vulnerability, when it
was decided to just drop it from the archive altogether), or the Flash
plugin (well, it's in contrib, but only because it downloads the actual
plugin from the web) or msttcorefonts (also in contrib, for the same
reason as the Flash plugin). Or giflib. Those are all obscure things.
In fact, the GR last year [1] showed that most DDs think that non-free
still contains useful software; not just obscure stuff.
[1] http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/vote_002
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