At Sat, 22 Feb 2003 23:22:10 -0500, Ian Pushee wrote: > > This isn't specificly a ppc-debian issue, but hopefuly someone will have > some insite... I am trying to install the PINE mail/news reader on my
The issue is that the way pine is licensed. As I understand it you can re-distribute pine binaries, and you can re-distribute pine source code, but you cannot re-distributed modifications to the pine source code without express permission from the University of Washington. This disqualifies pine as being "free software" as defined by the DFSG (Debian Free Software Guidelines). Now, you may wonder how a company like Red Hat includes Pine? The answer is Red Hat as an exclusive agreement that allows them to redistribute modified source code copies of Pine. So why doesn't Debian get a similar agreement? The answer is again the DFSG, which states: "8. License Must Not Be Specific to Debian The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program's being part of a Debian system. If the program is extracted from Debian and used or distributed without Debian but otherwise within the terms of the program's license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the Debian system." I really wish that the pine authors would reconsider their license and release it as free software. I've heard rumors that Red Hat is considering removing pine from the next release of Red Hat, hopefully that will get their attention. At any rate, try mutt. It is GPL free, and chock full of nice features.
