On Sat, Aug 14, 1999 at 06:30:01AM -0500, Jeramy B Smith wrote: > > why is that LinuxPPC has the latest netscape communicator > > up and running but Debian does not? > > > > Sergio > > I thought it was because Netscape 3,4 aren't totally free. Maybe 5 will make > the Debian requirements.
Debian has several different distributions. main, contrib, non-free and non-US. The main distribution only allows Free Software as defined by the Debian Free Software Guidelines (http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines). contrib and non-free are "not part of the Debian system, although it has been configured for use with Debian." Seems a pretty thin distinction to me, but at least the line is there. Anyhow, stuff like Netscape, which is just free beer, goes into non-free. Mozilla's (Netscape 5) NPL license allows it to go into the main distribution. They're both currently in the Powerpc distribution under non-free/web and main/web respectively. Mozilla is at M8 (current milestone), Netscape is at 4.6 (looks like pieces of 4.61 are there). I don't know what the current version of Netscape is, but something tells me it doesn't make a whole lot of difference. I wonder, does MySQL's "Its free unless you're using Windows" license fail the "License Must Not Contaminate Other Software"? -- Michael G Schwern [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pobox.com/~schwern /(?:(?:(1)[.-]?)?\(?(\d{3})\)?[.-]?)?(\d{3})[.-]?(\d{4})(x\d+)?/i
